


Bloodbath Time

by theunknownfate



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Blood and Gore, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mind Meld, Monsters, Multi, OT3, Telepathic Sex, Threesome, eventual OT3, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:37:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 27,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunknownfate/pseuds/theunknownfate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for an old kinkmeme prompt for a bath time fic. Me, being me, it turned into a bloodbath time fill instead, complete with lovecraftian horrors. Eventual OT3 and smut on the way. But first, carnage!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She had no idea how much of the blood belonged to either of them. They had come staggering in, holding each other up, then collapsing side by side on the floor. Dan’s cape was completely gone and it took her a moment to realize that it was the soggy mass tied tight around Rorschach’s head. She couldn’t imagine what had been able to do this much damage to them both, and she wouldn’t find out unless she could get at least one of them patched up enough to talk. 

She knelt between them, trying to assess which injuries were the worst. Rorschach was unconscious, entirely too still, with blood spreading from slashes on his arms and one across his chest. One of his knees wasn’t at quite the right angle. Dan was gasping, pawing feebly at the cape covering Rorschach’s face. 

“Cnt look,” he wheezed. “Nvrr frgive me…”

“I won’t look,” she promised quickly, more worried at the blood seeping out from the edges of Dan's throat armor. “I just need to see what kind of head wound he has.” Dan gasped something else, and then slumped. Laurie willed herself not to panic. _Can’t flutter back and forth_ , she told herself. _Check them both, then move on from there._

Rorschach’s head had been laid open to the skull, but the skull was intact. He needed stitches, lots of them, but it wasn’t a fatal wound. She retied the cape and turned to Dan. His armor was battered and there was a puncture in his neck. It wasn’t a bullet hole, so it was probably a stab wound. 

‘What in the world did you boys tangle with??” she muttered aloud. Once Dan’s armor was off, she could see the mass of bruises across his ribs. At least one of them was broken. 

“Ok,” she said. The throat wound was first: clean it, stitch it, then do Rorschach’s chest wound, then his scalp. Then check Dan for internal bleeding again and bind his ribs. Then the arm slashes. Worry about the rest when that was done. 

It took hours and she wasn’t looking forward to Rorschach’s critique of her stitching job and her ‘womanly’ talents in general. Like it was her fault she hadn’t been allowed to take home ec. Finally, all the holes were closed and broken bones bound. Popping Rorschach’s knee back into place had wrenched a sound out of him, but he was quiet now. She set ice packs over the worst of the bruises and went to clean up.

“There,” she told herself in the shower. “That wasn’t so bad. Didn’t even have to get out that cauterizing wand. They’ll be fine.” Her breathing hitched a little and anyone who had spent his or her formative years in home ec instead of combat training might’ve cried. As it was, she sniffled a little, got the rest of the blood off, and then went to check on them again. 

They were both still breathing, but neither moved when she spoke to them. They also stank to high heaven, reeking of blood and adrenaline and something weirder. She wondered again how much of the mess on Dan was Rorschach’s blood and vice versa. She didn’t want to move Dan until he was awake to tell her how his ribs were doing. 

“That means you’re first,” she sighed and gingerly slid her hands under Rorschach’s arms to drag him to the bathroom.


	2. Chapter 2

Her shower had been hot enough to warm the porcelain a little, but she doubted that would be enough to inspire any gratitude from Rorschach. She wrestled him into the tub as gently as possible, then started on his clothes. He half-revived at every layer to try to slap her hands away. The first two times he made angry noises, but the closer she got to his skin, the more the sounds became whimpers. 

“It’s ok,” she told him. “You know me.” Despite yourself, she felt a pang for him, hurt so badly and that was just the outside. Maybe knowing her would make it worse. Maybe he was that used to being betrayed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She was exhausted after getting his whole outfit off. Half his bulk seemed to be clothes. She rested while the water ran. She left his face covered, wondering suddenly what had happened to his mask, and spread a towel out over his hips so she wouldn’t have to look and he wouldn’t be able to accuse her of any lasciviousness. Because she’d be very tempted to give that line of stitches across his chest a yank if he did. Ungrateful bastard. He even made her mad when he was unconscious!

Just turn your brain off and do it, she told herself. Don’t think about what you think of him or what he’ll think of you. Just pick up the rag and scrub. Gently. 

She managed the last part. She started at his shoulder and washed down his arm. There wasn’t a spare ounce on him, all muscle, scars, and freckles. The water around him was turning murky and brown from blood and filth. He made a low noise at the warm water running down his arm. Maybe it was ticklish. And maybe he’ll haul off and slug me right in the face if he wakes up suddenly, she thought. His arms are like iron. He could crack my jaw like a walnut.

Full of such thoughts she cleaned carefully around his stitches to stall before moving to his chest. Solid as a rock here too, she thought. A speckled one with really rough edges. Throw him out to sea and maybe in a hundred years he’ll be worn smooth. Or keep it in your hand like a worrystone until the warmth and constant fondling did the job. Maybe that’s what Dan was trying to do. 

She ran the cloth along his collarbones, gently scrubbed the blood and grim out of the hollow of his throat, and started down his chest. He was all angles and planes, stitched skin jumping under her hands no matter how delicate she tried to be. The old scars were worse across his torso. She wasn’t sure where they ended and his muscle tone began, like they had been inflicted by whoever had hacked his abdomen out of granite. 

His hissed, startling her, and squirmed weakly. The water level was now up to the bottom of the slash and apparently it stung. She turned the water off and let him settle down before she started on his legs. They were as rock hard as the rest of him and his feet were rough as sharkskin. Apparently he was a walker who had never ridden a car in his life. 

The poor guy would’ve been better off in an Amish community, she thought suddenly. They should’ve just shipped him upstate and let him live a life of strict propriety and hard work, surrounded by no-frills men and modest women. 

The only thing left was his face. She looked at the blood-soaked fabric and wondered again what had happened to his mask and how upset he would be about it when he woke up. Carefully, gently, ready to dodge if he reacted violently, she slid her hands up under the cape without lifting it. The skin underneath it was a weird mix of textures, coarse stubble, slick blood, and something crusty she hoped was dried blood. 

His breath was warm and damp against her hand. She felt his face contort under her fingers and a soft sound ghosted out from under the cloth. 

“Are you awake?” she asked. 

“Don’t touch me.” It was barely a whisper and had no anger in it. He almost curled forward, but the chest wound stopped him. 

“Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll get you something to wrap in. Then you can rest.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dan was heavier than Rorschach had been. She had to talk to him a long time before he resurfaced so that he could help drag himself to the bathroom with her help. He didn’t want to sit in the tub, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get back up again. He clung to the handhold while she turned the shower on. After a moment, she stripped down and got in with him.

She started at the top, running soapy hands through his hair. He closed his eyes and leaned into her.

“I put Rorschach in the guest room,” she said. “And his clothes are in the washer. I didn’t wash his hair, so we’ll have to wash the pillowcases.”

‘We’d’ve bled to death if you hadn’t been here,” he said, wincing. “Thank you.”

“He might still need a blood transfusion. What happened?” she asked, cleaning his face with her hands. She smoothed his pained expression with her thumbs, stroking his eyebrows and lips into a gentler expression.

“Biologics,” he murmured, releasing one hand to put it around her. “The squid. That damned squid…. Somebody took the pieces and reverse engineered biologic weapons out of it. Lovecraft would be spinning in his grave.”

“Who?”

“Horror author. The bad guys had tentacles.”

“God, that’s a nightmare!” She was wide-eyed with horror a moment before remembering that he was in no shape to be comforting. That was her job this time. She stroked the blood and sweat off his neck, careful over the stitched puncture. He almost sobbed, nodding and leaning into her shoulder. 

“I thought I was dead,” he said. “One the tentacles had a sharp tip and it stabbed me in the neck. Went straight through the Kevlar. Ohh!” Her hands had ghosted over the wrappings on his ribs. She pulled them back quickly and then slid them around to work on his back, whispering apologies. “Rorschach saved me. They cut him to shreds, but he didn’t stop.”

He was quiet for a long time after that and she kept wiping him off. He was sleeker than Rorschach, smooth skin over gentler lines, for all that he was much larger and wider. She used a handful of her own silky hair to wash him with, getting a reluctant smile out of him. She could feel his response to that against her thigh, but just breathing was making him flinch, and any rolls in the hay would have to wait until his ribs had knit. She knelt to get the rest of the blood and mess off of his legs. 

She slid back up over him, and kissed him. She shut off the water and went to get towels to wrap him in. She put him to bed and at his request went to check on Rorschach again. For her own peace of mind, she went around to check all the doors and windows before going back up. It would take more than a bath to wash them both clean of this, she thought. They're both freaked out. 

After a little while longer, she got up and went to get Rorschach up too. He was weak and shaking, but when she insisted that she needed them both in one place to keep an eye on and lied a little about how worried she about Dan, he staggered up the stairs with her. She tucked him in over faint grumbles on the other side of Dan, and was finally able to relax a little herself.


	4. Chapter 4

A low sound made Laurie sit up again. What sort of noise did genetically reverse-engineered squid people make? She didn’t know and the unfamiliar sound had her heart speeding up before she looked over to see Rorschach struggling to sit up.

“Hey,” she got up and went around the bed to lean over him. “Easy. Take another pillow-“ His hand shot out and closed around her neck. She saw the skin go tight around his stitches and in the next two seconds he had reversed their positions and pinned her against the headboard. Moving that quickly had to have hurt, but though his arms shook, they didn’t let go. 

“You aren’t hurt. Why aren’t you hurt?” He was drowning confusion with anger. It was probably an emotion he was more comfortable with.

“I wasn’t there,” she began, knowing he would probably condemn her for that too. The torn cape bandage had fallen away at the movement and she could’ve seen his face if she had been able to look away from the eyes. There was horror in them that triggered an answering fear in her. Forget that he was the one attacking her. Whatever had frightened him so badly was way scarier than he was. 

“It’s just me,” she said, in case he didn’t realize it.

“Open your mouth.”

“What?” He hooked a thumb inside her lip without waiting and levered her jaws open from there. From anyone else, the last remark would’ve struck her as lewd, but he was seriously looking for something and since his other hand was around her throat, she let him look. She could still reach his stitches if she had to. 

He took a deep breath and pulled his thumb free, then let go of her neck to use both hands to feel across her face. He was stretching her skin tight between his fingers, squinting close for something microscopic. 

“What are you looking for?” She hated how meek she sounded, but he hadn’t hurt her yet and she didn’t want to undo her hard work patching him up if it could be helped. 

“Seams,” he said. She blinked at him.

“My face doesn’t have seams,” she said after a moment. He must’ve come to the same conclusion, because his hands fell away. With the threat of danger passed, his composure faded with his adrenaline, and he started to shake.

“Lay down before you fall,” she sighed, moving over to make room. He didn’t seem to realize his face was uncovered and crawled brokenly over to lay beside Dan. He dragged the dislocated knee painfully and she could see the skin bunch around his stitches. That had to hurt. She went and got him an ice pack for his knee and another for his head. 

“Now,” she said, climbing in next to him. “Whose face has seams?”

“The things…” He made squidy motions in front of his face that must’ve hurt his slashed arms because he stopped with a grimace. “Looked normal until their faces split open.”

“Jesus,” she said. “You got them all though, right? They’re all dead now?”

“Got the ones there,” his breathing caught a little and he glanced at the row of stitches across his chest. “They wanted heads.”

“You mean human heads?” Laurie asked after a pause. If she hadn’t heard it from the rational side of this pair already she would be checking his head again.

“Brains maybe. Faces split. Tentacles came out. One had a hook end. Stabbed into throat, coiled around. Did something. Heads come off. Carried them away. One stabbed Nite Owl.” He shook a little harder. “Saw the hook go in. Had to get it out before it could do whatever makes the heads come off. Pulled too hard. Bled too much. Thought maybe I had killed him first.”

“He’s all right,” she said, daring to put a hand on his shoulder. “You saved him.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she leaned a little closer. He was stiff and sticky with the blood she hadn’t gotten off under the cape. “Thank you.” 

The conversation had woken Dan up. He rolled over to put one arm around Rorschach and reached over him with the other to pull Laurie closer. Rorschach went rigid at the full body contact on each side. Laurie wasn’t sure what to move where, but Dan stroked her cheek with his thumb so Rorschach could see. Petting her to show she was safe? She was almost offended, but it seemed to work. Rorschach relaxed, even when Dan rested his chin against his shoulder. 

“We’re ok,” he said and for once, neither of them argued.


	5. Chapter 5

The news was full of reports of decapitated bodies being found. They were in alleys, public restrooms, the subway, two were even found in a corner booth at an all-night diner. No witnesses, no leads, no known connection between the victims, and police profilers were talking about past serial killers. There was speculation about why the killer or killers wanted the heads, but no one mentioned squids. Laurie had sat down to watch the news while the frozen dinners heated up and was now curled up in the center of the couch like a teenager in front of a horror movie. Pride wouldn’t let her turn on more lights, but she was still ridiculously glad when the anchors turned to sports. The oven timer made her jump and swear.

She went in to get the food out. It was the only thing she had seen that didn’t require noisy preparation and unlike some people, she wasn’t comfortable ransacking someone else’s cabinets. TV dinner grade lasagna and a Salisbury steak in filmy gravy bubbled at her from their little trays. She found two oversize ice cream bowls to dump each tray into. The steak would mix just fine with the mashed potatoes and shriveled peas, and the lasagna wouldn’t taste any worse over the side of corn and garlic bread. 

She found the spoons on the second try and was about to take a test bite when she heard a sound from the basement. She froze. There was a way in there from the river, she remembered suddenly. Squid people could maybe find it if they were maybe tracking Dan and Rorschach. She checked the lock quickly, hoping the click wouldn’t alert whatever it was. The sound didn’t come again. Maybe she had imagined it, maybe it was nothing out of the ordinary, and maybe there was something at the foot of the stairs, listening to her listen to it. 

You’re a hero, too, she told herself. You don’t need to scamper up to get one of the men to help you. They’re hurt anyway. You can check it out for yourself. Despite the pep talk, she stood staring at the door without moving, straining her ears for any sound at all. Several minutes ticked by with nothing. She grabbed a chair and braced it under the doorknob, just to be safe . She turned to reach for the bowls and found Rorschach standing right behind her. Her gasp of surprise rose to a little scream when she saw the blood on his hands.

“Quiet,” he hissed. “What’s in the basement?”

“I don’t know! I thought I heard something. What- what happened??”

“I’ll check basement. Take care of Daniel. Get him up and bring him to Archie. We have to leave.” 

She almost asked what was wrong but the terrifying and terrified look on his face made her run for the stairs. Dan was still in bed, sprawled there like a corpse. He was bleeding from his throat again and was pinching his neck above the wound. Had his stitches torn? Had Rorschach actually hurt him? He tried to raise his head when he saw her come in. 

“Llleft a piece in neck,” he gurgled. “F-felt it moving.”

She ran to him and saw something wriggling under the skin he was pinching. Her stomach lurched. Dan was pale and fighting a new wave of shock down. She had pried the wound open before she stitched it to look for shrapnel. How had she not seen it??

“Rorschach couldn’t reach,” he tried to explain. She wound her fingers around his to help him hold it still. 

“Get up,” she said. “We need something sharp.”

“Rorschach was-”

“He’s busy. Get up.” Not letting go of the wriggling lump, she pulled at his arm. Her no-nonsense tone had him struggling to his feet. She let him bend to get his glasses and started towing him to the door.

“Remember how I wanted work with animals?” she said, trying to distract them both as the thing thrashed under their fingers. “I used to sneak off to help at the animal shelter and one of the dirtiest jobs that no one wanted to help with was to remove warbles from the strays. If you tried to squeeze them out they would pop and flood your system with toxins. We’ll get the first aid kit and get in Archie.”

“Why are we leaving?” 

“It’s Rorschach’s idea. What got him all frantic? Besides a piece of tentacle coming to life in your neck.”

“S-said he heard something.”

“Oh, God, I did too…”

Right on cue there was a crash from below, like someone falling down a flight of stairs. Dan lunged to go see and Laurie had to brace her legs to stop him. 

“First things first!” she cried, holding Dan back along with her panic. “This things headed for your brain. Whatever they are, they want inside our heads! We have to get it out before anything else.” There was a terrible squelching thud and then silence. 

“Rorschach?” Dan called, all worry. He was going down the stairs as quickly as he was able with Laurie attached to his neck. Thankfully, Rorschach answered right away, even if his tone wasn’t comforting.

“Hurry,” he growled. “Now.”


	6. Chapter 6

Rorschach was at the basement door, breathing hard. He was hurt and Laurie was surprised at how dismayed she was to see his new injuries. They were sucker marks, she thought queasily, little circles of skin just yanked off him. The same stink that had made her drag them both to the bath earlier hung over him. That must be what the squids smell like, she realized. 

There was a body at the foot of the stairs with its head split open. The mess that should’ve been skull and brains was a cluster of tentacles. The two halves of the face on either side looked placidly human. It was wet, so it probably had come through the river. Hysterical fear bubbled up in her throat and she swallowed it down with effort. 

“Are there more?” she asked. 

“Not in sight.”

“Did it just randomly stumble on the river entrance or was it following your trail?”

“Coincidence seems unlikely. Unless they’re everywhere. Moving house to house.”

The thought froze her heart in her chest, and the flat, matter of fact way he said it, made her want to slap him. The thing under Dan’s skin thrashed a little harder, making him gasp.

“All right. Look.” Laurie tried to get hold of herself. If this was a horror movie then there would be one hiding on Archie somewhere to lunge out when they thought they were safe. “Check the ship,“ she told Rorschach. “Make sure there’re none hiding on it. I’ll get your clothes and some food. Dan? Do NOT let go of that thing. Take your other hand and hold it like I am. No, like this. Let the other fingers rest. If they slip, that thing might burrow deeper. I don’t want to crack your head open to dig it out of your skull, but I’ll bring a hammer just in case.”

He blinked in surprise, and even Rorschach looked up. She was already heading upstairs again. She had been serious about it, but still had to smirk a little as behind her she heard Dan say. “And that’s why I love her.”

Maybe playing Wendy to some overgrown Lost Boys wasn’t so terrible after all. She did a quick run through the house, grabbing the blanket off the bed and spreading it out to dump things on. Clothes, some randomly grabbed toiletries, the first aid kit, the small tool box, yes, the hammer, a flashlight, and an ironic ransack of the pantry for some nonperishables. She forced herself to stop and look for a can opener. Horror movies did not need the sitcom levity of no can opener. Finally, she grabbed the corners of the blanket up into a sack and slung it over her shoulder.

Archie was running now, lights shining yellow in the dim basement. Rorschach was in the hatch. He didn’t wave at her to hurry, but she did anyway. 

“It’s making the noise again,” he said in an urgent whisper as she handed him the bundle. 

“What is?” She wished he had his mask back. Seeing him, of all people, be so uncertain and frightened made her own fear cut even deeper. 

“The thing in his neck. I heard it just before I heard the one in the basement. I think it’s talking to the other ones. I think it’s calling more.”

“No. No way.” She was too horrified to do anything but deny it. “They want Dan.” Saying it aloud sent the panic welling back up. “We have to cut that thing out of him!” 

“Let’s get airborne first,” Dan called from the front. He sounded as strained as he looked and a little annoyed at being discussed like he wasn’t just a few feet away. Laurie took over pinching the thing still to give him his hands free, but it was thrashing so hard she knew it was impossible for him to concentrate. His face was a grimace of disgust and pain. Rorschach went to his other side, holding him steady. 

“Get us out,” he whispered. “Get us up. Then we’ll take care of you.“ Dan nodded and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then powered up the engines. They went roaring down the tunnel, Laurie and Rorschach braced on either side of the pilot chair. The river went gushing by and Laurie couldn’t help but be glad that it wasn’t thick with tentacles. 

Once in the air, Dan took them straight up above cloud cover and set Archie on hover. As soon as his hands released the controls, Rorschach had him out of the chair and on the floor. 

“Done this much before,” he muttered, then looked up at Laurie. “I’ll stitch this time. You get it out.”


	7. Chapter 7

The incision was small and clean, just a flick of the blade. Laurie dug in and grabbed the squirming lump. She was trying to imagine that it was just a warble, like the ones in the shelter cats, and not a chunk of sentient monster. It fought her, trying to burrow deeper. Dan inhaled hard through his clenched teeth. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. 

“Don’t be sorry, just do it,” growled Rorschach. He was leaning over Dan’s upper body, holding his arms down without putting any weight on his broken ribs. He was also trying to keep weight off his knee. Laurie added cleaning out Rorschach’s suction cup wounds to her mental list and then focused on Dan’s neck again. Another neat slice opened the cut all the way to the thing. Dan didn’t flinch, but she heard his teeth click together. 

She could see it, something sea foam-pale and squirming, about the size of her thumb. Rorschach handed her the tweezers before she could ask. She couldn’t even look at him. If he looked anywhere near as horrified as she felt, she might throw up. She closed the tweezers gently around the thing’s nearest end. It contracted in on itself, making her hiss and Dan jerk. 

“Sorry,” she said again. She still had a grip on it and began to ease it gently back. It wriggled, forcing a pained sound from Dan. Steady pressure, she kept telling herself. No fumbling or squeezing. No ruptures. It flexed and dimples formed on its surface.

“It’s doing something,” she said. The dimples opened like pores.

“Out,” said Rorschach. “Get it out now!” He half lunged like he would rip the tweezers out of her hand to do it himself, and while what was left of her shelter volunteering experience screamed that yanking was bad, instinct agreed. She tugged back, squeezing the tweezers tight so it wouldn’t slip away. It shot oozing wet spikes out of the pores, anchoring itself in Dan’s skin. He choked back a roar of pain. Rorschach’s hand closed tight around Laurie’s upper arm and she sobbed. 

The damage was done, a coldly rational part of her brain said. Only help was to clean it out in time. She twisted, forcing the spikes to pull free, and ripped it out in a spray of blood and something that definitely wasn’t. Dan finally screamed, and the sound of his pain electrified Rorschach into action. Before the thread of blood and ooze had even separated between the thing and the injury, he clamped his mouth down on Dan’s neck.

Laurie couldn’t help but recoil. Dan moaned and clutched at Rorschach’s shoulders and while Laurie tried to get her mind around what she was seeing, the thing she was clenching in the tweezers made a soft keening sound. Rorschach raised his head and spat a mouthful of blood and ooze out onto Archie’s floor. 

“Kill it!” he hissed and went back to the puncture. He was sucking the toxins out. That was such a bad idea that it almost overwhelmed her relief and gratitude that he was doing it. 

“There’s a cauterizing wand in the kit,” she said, swallowing hard. “Use it on him before I roast this monster with it.”

“Cauterizing powder in the back,” he said, spitting again. “Kill that thing with wand and then go get powder.”

“Man with the plan,” she said. She looked at the thing while she felt around in the kit for the wand with her free hand. It was stretching out and contracting, retracting the spikes and then shooting them out again. It changed color too, red bubbling up under the pale skin until it looked like she had yanked a chunk of flesh out of his neck.

It sizzled when she rammed the wand into it, sizzled and wailed in a subtle reverberation that played hell in her inner ear for a moment, until it fried to a crisp. Still not trusting it, she dropped it out of the hatch and then did the same with the rag she mopped up Rorschach’s spit with. It stank, but she tossed the packet of powder to Rorschach and helped hold Dan still while he dusted the wound with it. Dan screamed again, digging his fingernails into both their legs. 

Rorschach was stitching up the puncture now. Watching him work so steadily soothed Laurie’s frantic nerves, and after a bit, her grip on Dan relaxed a little. He was still contorted with pain, but had a hold of himself again. He flinched when she stroked his hair back from his forehead, so she started to clean the sucker marks across Rorschach’s shoulders. They were weeping, but just smelled like raw flesh. 

Rorschach glanced over his shoulder at her and made a sound she decided meant acceptance, then went back to stitching.


	8. Chapter 8

Dan was shaking and clammy by the time Rorschach was finished. Laurie had found some pain meds in the first aid kit and gave him two. She couldn’t help but imagine the ooze from the spikes tunneling through his veins like, well, like tentacles. He swallowed them dry and tried to lay down. His ribs were obviously hurting him, so Rorschach felt over them to make sure they were still in line. All the stress and blood loss combined with an empty belly had him under in no time. Laurie cushioned his head so there wouldn’t be any strain on his neck and then turned to Rorschach.

He had slumped where he sat, looking exhausted. His arms quivered and she wondered again how badly the stitches were hurting him. Dan’s hand had closed over his thigh, just above the dislocated knee, at some point in the operation and he made no move to pull away from the grip. Laurie rolled a sweater from the pile into a cushion and set it by Dan’s shoulder.

“And one for you,” she said, holding out another pain pill. He shook his head. 

“One of us has to stay alert,” he said. 

“And that would be me,” she said. “Take it, so I can check your stitches without worrying about being too rough. You’re a mess.” He still hesitated, so she moved behind him and pulled him gently backwards. He tensed and she remembered her earlier trepidation about him hitting her, but didn’t feel the same dread this time. To her partial surprise and relief, he grunted and allowed himself to sink back. When she held the pill to his lips, he crunched it down without wincing at the taste. 

“I didn’t clean you up as good as I should have because he told me not to take off the bandage,” she said, nodding towards Dan. “What happened to your mask?”

“Torn. Leaking. Took it when he wrapped injuries. Probably still with his armor.” His breath caught as she dabbed lightly at the sutures across his head. “Can fix it later.” 

Was his hair really that red or was it just soaked through with dried blood? It was stiff and prickly under her fingers and she wished there was enough water to try to rinse it. As it was, she cleaned his face, seeing the last rim of color in his eyes crowded out as the meds dilated his pupils, then moved on to his chest. The bunched skin between the stitches was red too, and he closed his eyes when she touched it. 

“I’m not as good at sutures as you are,” she said. “I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a nasty scar.”

“Doesn’t matter.” 

“Does to me. He might be dead if it wasn’t for you. The one that came in the basement might’ve killed me. The least I can do is appreciate the pain it cost you and try to make it go away. “

He shifted awkwardly, reminding her of his partner for a moment, but the painkiller was kicking in and he didn’t speak again until she curled on the other side of Dan and pulled the blanket over all three of them.

“Monsters,” he said softly. 

“I always thought people were as bad as anything could get,” she sighed back. He was quiet for another long few minutes then she heard him make another of his noises. 

“When we first saw it,” he said. “Reminded me. Of… pictures.” She rolled over to look at him and he gave her a nervous glance, like he wasn’t sure he should tell her anymore. 

“Pictures of what?” she asked finally. 

“Spent a few years in a boys' home,” he said, obviously hating to admit to ever being a child. “One boy never talked, but drew pictures. Some of them looked like the squid people.”

“Creepy,” Laurie admitted. He gave her another quick look. 

“Some of the other boys recognized it,” he said. “Said they had seen it too.” She processed that for a moment. 

“Dan said they were engineered from the squid,” she said. “But something like them has been lurking around in our nightmares for a long time, huh?


	9. Chapter 9

They were quiet for a little bit after that. Laurie thought Rorschach might’ve dozed off until he sighed and looked back at her over Dan’s chest. She had set her head on Dan’s shoulder at an angle so she could see both of them. 

“You ok?” she asked.

“Haven’t called me crazy.” 

“About what? The monsters? I lived with Jon too long to dismiss possibilities. Or miracles. And if miracles can exist, so can monsters.”

Their voices made Dan stir and he shifted, rolling toward Rorschach with a grunt. Laurie readjusted her position on his shoulder and had to hide her smile at the noise Rorschach made when Dan’s hand slid over his ribs.

“Easy,” she whispered, intending it for Dan, but Rorschach obeyed too. He was visibly rattled, looking at the hand like it had fangs instead of fingers. “It’s ok,” she added. “He’s a cuddler.” She reached over to slide her fingers around Dan’s and eased his hand back from the chest stitches. 

“Laurrr…” Dan groaned. Rorschach looked resigned, but then the sleepy sound trailed off into a “..schach…” that made him look more alarmed. 

“Welcome to my world,” Laurie sighed. He looked from her to Dan, expression clouding over. “He calls for you in his sleep fairly often. I was jealous at first, until I realized that it wasn’t you I was jealous of.”

“…?” It wasn’t a word, just a flustered, confused sound. 

“I never had a partner, really. I patrolled with Jon but that was… well, it wasn’t what you two had. We didn’t…” she struggled for the right word. “Work. Together like you guys did. And I knew I couldn’t step right into that, even if I wanted to tag along and help. I’d still be a tagalong.”

He still looked uncertain and she was too worn out to be resentful. 

“He loves you,” she said. He almost flinched, eyes widening. “So for his sake, I knew I would have to try to.” The look of disbelief was aimed at her now. “It got easier when you stopped insulting me. Even if you still think I’m a whore, I appreciate that you stopped saying it.”

His eyebrows knitted together, then smoothed out slowly. He look away from her, shifting in a way that might be embarrassment in another person. 

“Proved you weren’t,” he grumbled. “Fixed costume. Stayed.” 

“A lesser woman would expect you to apologize,” she said, only halfway teasing. She knew better than to expect that, but it would be nice.

“He loves you,” Rorschach whispered, echoing her earlier words back at her. Admitting that seemed to pain him. He looked up at the ceiling. “Never minded himself being insulted, but wouldn’t stand for any word against you. Or Hollis Mason.”

“The things we do for you,” she whispered into Dan’s ear. He muttered into Rorschach’s hair and then jerked. He sat up groggily, jostling Laurie and bumping Rorschach’s bad knee hard enough to make him pale. 

“Can’t be out of fuel already,” he said, fighting through the medicated haze. “How long have I been out?”

“Barely half an hour,” said Laurie, untangling from the blanket. “Easy! We haven’t even moved! Does it take that much fuel just to hover?”

“Of course not!” Dan was rubbing the bleariness out of his eyes and squinting at the gauges. “….And… the fuel level is fine… what set off the alarm?”

Rorschach got to his feet and took a step. His hurt knee buckled and he leaned on the wall, jerking his head sharply when Laurie offered him a hand. 

“No alarm, Daniel,” he said.

“I heard something!” Dan was still searching his console for something wrong. 

“I didn’t,” Laurie offered. Dan looked annoyed, then winced and wrapped an arm around his bandaged ribs. He turned, mouth opening to speak, then stopped and looked closer out through the window.

“There’s no lights,” he said. Below them, the clouds had cleared. The entire city was dark. Only their vantage point and the weak light of the waning moon allowed them to see the edges and shapes of buildings below. Without that, it would’ve been like looking down into black water. Rorschach sucked in a breath hard enough to make him cough. They looked down for another moment, weighing the implications, and then he coughed again.


	10. Chapter 10

Laurie turned to stare at him, eyes wide and frightened in the dim light of the console. 

“You didn’t swallow any of that stuff, did you?” she asked. A glare was worth at least a hundred words, but the one Rorschach gave her just said three. Of course not. He took a deep, experimental breath. Dan was looking at him too, more concerned than afraid. His lungs felt fine but his throat was a little clogged. He cleared it roughly and Laurie stepped closer. 

“Your turn,” she said. “Open your mouth.” Her hands came up to either side of his face and he stepped back. His calves hit the edge of his seat. Cornered. Dan turned on an overhead light and Laurie’s thumbs slipped into the corners of his mouth, so he forced down the growl and let her tilt his head to peer down his throat. She made a face. 

“Your breath smells like that gunk,“ she said. “But I don’t see anything.“ Dan had moved to put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a rub that was probably meant to be comforting. Laurie pulled her thumbs out, but kept her hold on his jaw. “And you’re both hearing things. You.” She looked hard at Rorschach. “Heard it down in his neck before that one came out of the basement. And you.” She looked over his shoulder at Dan. “Are hearing alarms during a city-wide blackout. I’m the only one not hearing things and I’m the only one who hasn’t come in contact with any of those… things.”

“You think they got to us somehow.” Dan was taking it seriously. “Affected us.” 

“God, I hope not.” She blew her bangs up off her forehead, eyes darting around the cockpit as she thought. “Ok.” She looked back at Rorschach and her hands slid to his shoulders. “I know you haven’t eaten, but I want you to try and throw up. Then you can have one of my smokes to scorch anything else out. Purge and burn.”

His eyes narrowed at her and she was bracing herself for the argument when a sudden cough shook him again. She and Dan both tensed, their fingers tightening. Annoyed as he was, he gave in with another grumble. 

“Never smoked before,” he said, turning to flop in his chair. “Do that first and throw up easily.”

“It worked for me when I was twelve,” Dan said, grin sheepish, but welcome. “On a dare. I sucked it like a milkshake straw and next thing I knew, I was heaving. 

“Whatever works,” Laurie said. She lit one for him and Dan went to find him a bucket. Rorschach took the cigarette from her with some trepidation. It would’ve been funny if she wasn’t imagining the ooze from the spikes soaking through the inside of his mouth sending tendrils searching for his brain. If anybody could resist mind control, it was probably Rorschach, but just in case pure, dogged will power wasn’t enough- 

Her train of thought was interrupted by an explosion of hacking and wheezing. Rorschach had obediently taken a deep drag and was now coughing his first lungful everywhere. His eyes watered and he clutched at his chest wound, but didn’t vomit. Laurie had forgotten how badly a chest slash might hurt during a coughing fit, but hardened her heart. 

“Try it again,” she said. He squinted at her through the tears, but did as she said. It didn’t work. He made it through the whole cigarette, gagging once or twice when the cough hurt him enough, but his stomach must’ve been as steady as the rest of him. 

“Just hit me,” he finally wheezed, pointing to his stomach. “Hard. Better than this.”

“The hardest I ever threw up in my life,” Laurie said suddenly. “Was down by the docks, a little after I started costuming professionally. It was an illegal immigration thing, they were bringing in boatloads of people from wherever and sneaking them into sweatshops and prostitution rings.” Rorschach coughed a few more times, but he was listening. “The guys running the ‘job placement’ part of it sometimes kept a few of the younger ones for themselves and, um, I found one that they had finished with.” She clasped her hands in her lap and shook them, like she was rattling dice. “A boy, maybe six years old. He’d been sodomized with everything they could fit in him, and then left in a back room for a week or so with some other kids."

“I can’t even tell you how it smelled in there. There wasn’t any plumbing, so they were all just laying in filth. Flies and, and rat crap and…“ She hesitated, and Rorschach’s stomach did seem to hitch. “The boy? He didn’t get up when the other kids did, so I went to go help him. He was delirious, burning up with a fever and all he had on was a big t-shirt. I didn’t see until I picked him up, that what they had done to him had torn him wide open. There was just a big hole there, and when I lifted him, maggots just came pouring out.”

Dan swore and Rorschach’s fingers tightened on the bucket. She stopped to cover her face with her hands and her voice broke.

“They were everywhere, running down his legs, all over my shoes. I could feel how warm they were from being inside him through my stockings. I must’ve screamed or something because he started to cry and I ran. I ran outside and puked my guts out. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop. I wanted to throw up everything I had ever eaten. To not have anything wet and squishy and gross inside me ever again. To be empty and… clean, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I was so grateful for awhile that Jon didn’t have blood or guts or mucus or shit or anything like that churning around under his skin. Never told him why. I never told anybody. I was ashamed for being so disgusted.”

She looked up at them, eyes shiny with tears that didn’t fall. Dan was a picture of horrified sympathy. He looked like might need the bucket himself soon. Rorschach had a death grip on it, rocking slightly and breathing hard through his nose. 

“No shame,” he gritted out. “Grk. In.” Whatever he was going to say was choked out and he finally heaved and threw up a mouthful of blood and shiny slime. A deep breath triggered another one. When they were sure that was all that was coming up, Dan took the bucket and brought him a bottle of water. Laurie started sorting out the pile of supplies that had been scattered in all the commotion. 

“You never told anyone else about that?” Dan asked her. “You always said you never wanted to be a mask. If your mother had known about that, she would’ve had to let you walk away.”

“Nah.” Laurie wasn’t looking at him. “I just made that up to turn his stomach.”

“Liar,” Rorschach rasped. “Child I’m sick for was you.”


	11. Chapter 11

None of them felt like eating after that. Laurie checked Rorschach’s breath again and declared it more smokey and vomity than squidy. He hadn’t coughed in awhile, so they were cautiously optimistic. Dan had them moving again, cruising the city for any sign of light. The radio was quiet. 

“People are still down there,” Dan said. “The powers out and communications are down, but it’s not like the city is just empty all of a sudden.”

“Keep an eye out for fires,” Rorschach said. “People light candles in blackouts and knock them over.”

“If it was me,” Laurie said. “I would want the lights off. If there was something I was hiding from in the dark, light might bring it to me faster.“ Rorschach hurmed and gave her a sideways glance that was almost worried.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” she said. “I’m not a little girl anymore. I can take it.”

“Should‘ve had someone with you,” he muttered and she rolled her eyes. 

“I didn’t drag that story out to get sympathy,” she sighed. “I was trying to make you sick, not feel sorry for me. Besides, you weren‘t that much older than me when you started taking on scumbags.”

“Docks were Comedian’s territory. He should’ve-”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t. All right? He wasn’t there. I was.”

“Look at that,“ Dan said suddenly. They had swept out over the harbor and there was faint trail in the dark water, the barest sheen of bioluminescence. “What are the odds that that’s completely natural and we’re only noticing it now because the other lights are out?”

“Where does it lead?” Laurie asked, squeezing in between the seats to look out. 

“Hard to tell.” He swung Archie around to follow the trail. 

“Veidt’s lights are on, now” Rorschach added, looking back over the city behind them. “Almost.” They looked and saw the purple V flicker briefly then go out. Other lights gleamed across the buildings in the skyline for a heartbeat before winking out again. Then one bright light came on and kept on. 

“What the hell is going on?” Dan wondered. They steered over towards it. They could see people moving on the street now, heading towards the lit buildings. When the lights went out, more came on farther away.

“A lure,” Rorschach said. “Drawing people out of hiding. Follow the lights. Herding them somewhere.”

“Oh my God,” Laurie watched a small crowd run across the street toward a building that had lights glowing off and on in the windows. “How can they do this? Even if the squids had control over the power grids, how would they know where the people are coming from?”

“Said they used a psychic’s mind to make the original squid,” Rorschach said unhappily. It wasn’t much of an explanation and he apparently resented it for that. 

“Unless it wasn’t the original squid,” Laurie said. “You told me that the kids had seen those things before. Can you remember the stories? What did kids do to get away? What did the squids want?”

“What are you talking about?” Dan asked. Rorschach looked uncertain, but nodded. 

“Park us out of reach and I’ll tell what I remember,” he said. Dan looked mystified, but nodded and set Archie back on hover.


	12. Chapter 12

“Don’t remember his name,” Rorschach said. “He didn’t talk. Cried if he was hurt, but never spoke. Always drawing. Didn’t hurt anything, so they let him.”

“You’ve lost me,” Dan said. 

“Kids in a boys home knew about the squid people years ago,” Laurie said quickly. Dan’s forehead crinkled as he processed that, and then he turned to Rorschach in startled sympathy once it clicked. Laurie shushed him before he could interrupt with questions. 

“Drew squid people,” Rorschach went on, refusing to look at them. “Then scribbled them out so they couldn’t be seen. Ran out of dark colors and had to scribble with light so we could see the drawing underneath. Other boys recognized it. Said it was a thing that came out of the dark, a boogie man. Said it didn’t have any thoughts so it would steal thoughts from people and eat them.”

“Thoughts? Is that why they want the heads?” Dan asked. Rorschach shrugged, even though it wasn’t really a question. 

“One boy said his brother told him about the squids. Brother was a junkie, said the squids were everywhere, always, but couldn’t be seen except by those in altered states and no one would believe them. Another boy, an older one, said they were from space and they could walk through walls and talk to you in your head. Said his mother had heard them behind the walls but no one believed her, and then one night they came through the wall and after that she was crazy and they took him to the home.“

“God, that’s sad,” Dan said. Rorschach shrugged again. 

“Did they know how to keep them away?” Laurie asked. “There’s always a trick to keeping boogie men away.”

“Circles of salt,” agreed Dan. “Red thread.” Rorschach tilted his head in thought. 

“Boy who drew,” he said eventually. “Would always draw a picture of the sun to hang over his bed. New one every day. Maybe to fool them into thinking it was daytime.”  
“Did anything ever happen to him?” Dan asked. 

“No. Younger than me. Still there when I left.”

“How long were you there?” It was asked gently, but Rorschach bristled. 

“Irrelevant.”

“Well, if we knew, maybe we could check records and track him down.”

“Reaching, Daniel. Years ago. The boy with the crazy mother was adopted when she died. Never saw him again.”

“And the junkie’s brother?”

“Dead. Fell off the roof in the middle of the night. Laid there until morning without making a sound. When they found him, he said he wanted to hear the stars. Brother had told him some other story about star voices. Was dead by noon.”

“That’s awful… Why were you in that place?”

“Fighting. Was provoked.”

“You know you’re not going to get away without explaining that.”

“Later. Squids don’t like sunlight? Wait until morning. See how many people didn’t follow the lights and what happened to those that did.”

“Good,” Laurie dragged out the blanket. “That means sleep for everybody. You two need to heal, and I’ve been fussing over you both since it happened. I‘m tired.” Dan settled down obligingly, happy to be fussed over a little more. Rorschach moved away to make room for Laurie next to Dan, but she snagged his belt loop and pulled him back to lay with them. “You too. Rest so you’ll heal. You have to be hurting. C’mon.”

Dan had an arm around her and smiled without a trace of jealousy while she tugged Rorschach in with them and pulled the blanket over him, too. He lay stiff while they snuggled each other and hoped he didn’t look as flustered as it felt when both their hands found their way over to him. Dan’s thumb ran over his eyebrow and much more lightly over the stitches in his head. Laurie’s hand curled around his arm, away from the stitches. 

“Want to hear the end of my story?” Laurie asked after a minute. 

“No,” they both said. 

“It’s a happier ending than I expected,“ she said. “The maggots? They saved the kid. Ate up all the infection that should’ve killed him. He needed surgery and I’m betting years and years of therapy, but he lived. Not all of them did.”

“Not exactly a happy ending,” Rorschach grumbled. 

“They do exist,” Dan promised. “You’ll see.”


	13. Chapter 13

Pain woke Rorschach, which in itself wasn’t unusual. The stitches in his scalp were hurting the worst. He had rolled over onto them in his sleep, and the rough texture of the sweater Laurie had grabbed and then given him as a pillow was rubbing the tender skin bunched between the sutures. He shifted, which made the less insistent throb in his chest wound flare into life again. It also made his scarf slip over his shoulder. He shouldn’t have fallen asleep in costume, but when he reached up to readjust the scarf, he found it in silky threads. When his eyes opened, he realized it was Laurie’s hair, thrown over his neck and chest. 

She was snuggled into Dan’s shoulder, and Dan’s arm was pillowing both their heads. He had somehow hooked his arm under Laurie’s head and then borrowed his hand under the sweater-pillow so that when Rorschach rolled off it, his cheek rested on Dan’s forearm. If he leaned forward just a little, he could rest his aching head against Laurie’s and the sleek arch of her back would be against his belly instead of just grazing his hip, and Dan’s other hand, the one hanging there over her side, could reach around his back and they could all just be safe and held for a little while. 

In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to move. He tried to ignore the pain and go back to sleep and did manage to doze a little before the sun rose. He didn’t see Dan wake up and so it came as a surprise when the arm under him curled, rolling him on his side and sandwiching him against Laurie’s back. Her head was too low against Dan’s chest to block the way, so it was Rorschach’s face Dan ended up nuzzling noses with. 

“Daniel!” It was more gasp than word, and sleepy eyes blinked at him. Instead of the answering gasp of horror and frantic scramble that he expected though, Dan squinted blearily at him. 

“You ok?” he asked, not seeming to mind the close proximity. “Did I bump your head?”

“No….” Rorschach mumbled, but the fingers were already combing through his hair, running lightly over the stitches. Pain sparked again, but that wasn’t really why he flinched.

“It feels a little warm,” Dan said. “And you are flushed. We’d better clean it again and dose you up for fever and infection.”

“Don’t need that,” Rorschach pulled away to sit up. Laurie’s hair slid off him as he moved and she muttered something into Dan’s armpit. He squirmed happily, trying to get away from the sensation without actually getting away from her. 

“Ticklish, Daniel?”

“She drools,” he said grinning. 

“Heard that,” she growled sleepily.

“I snore,” he said. “It all evens out.”

“Never heard you snore.”

“How often have you hung around to listen to me sleep? Wait, no, don’t answer that.”

“First time I’ve been snuggled.” Rorschach had trouble with the last word. It wasn’t one he used often and Laurie snickered at that. She rolled over to look at him, wiping her chin with the back of one hand. 

“I told you,” she said. “Cuddly-Dudley here is all hands.” 

“And when was this discussed?” Dan pretended to be indignant, but lost it in a wince when she examined his neck wound. 

“Looks ok,” she said. “How’s the ribs?”

“Nothing sleeping on metal grating floor can’t make excruciating,” he said, with his usual smile. 

“The cure for that,” Laurie said. “Is to bring your favorite people breakfast in bed.”

“How does that work?” 

“All you have to do is hand over the box of graham crackers,” she said, pointing. “You’re closest.”

He chuckled and did so. She took out a handful and passed the box to Rorschach. The sun was up, peeking through the round windows. Dan shuffled over to check all the gauges while Laurie was glared at for suggesting taking out Rorschach’s scalp stitches and redoing them. Rorschach declared his hair would cover any scar that was left and she dug some antibiotic salve out of the first aid kit and harassed him until he submitted to having it smeared all over his stitches.

“We need to recharge before too much longer,” Dan reported. “Probably not safe to go home right away. We can find an open station and take turns keeping watch until we’re charged.”

“Lot of unwanted attention taking ship into public,” Rorschach reminded him.

“People who’ve been hunted by blackout squid-people all night will be glad to see us,” Laurie chimed in. 

“Not me,“ Rorschach growled at her. “Don’t know me.”

“Oh…” she had forgotten about him not being seen without his mask. “Well…Can you fix it if we go back to get it? We can refuel while you get it and then be on our way.“ Dan looked concerned too, remembering how the mask had been laid open along with Rorschach’s head, blood and ink gushing everywhere, red hair and white skull in a ghoulish mess. He had torn it off to wrap his own tattered cape around the gash, hoping there wasn’t any brain matter in the wreckage. 

“Do… You have a spare?” he asked, tiptoeing back into what he had learned was forbidden territory as far as Rorschach was concerned. “Somewhere?” There was a grunt and Rorschach’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. 

“Great,” Dan went back to messing with the controls so he wouldn’t have to see the tension in his partner’s frame. “Pick a recharge station that you can get to it from and we’ll go there. It’s early yet.”


	14. Chapter 14

The radio was back on the air, talking about the massive power outage and what authorities thought caused it. There was also a series of disappearances being reported. Large groups of people had been misplaced in the dark and hadn’t reappeared when the lights came back. 

Many businesses were closed as the city recovered, but Rorschach directed them to an open station, then disappeared while Dan and Laurie refueled and restocked. In the early morning hours there was no one but the stone-faced clerk to see them, and if his lack of recognition was any indication he didn’t even notice the floating ship outside. They didn’t have to wait long before Rorschach returned, this time in full costume.

Dan had been expecting Rorschach’s gruffness to return in spades once he was masked again, but Laurie was taken aback at being so soundly rebuffed. Maybe Dan should’ve warned her, but he gave her back a quick rub to let her know it wasn’t her fault. 

They used the Veidt tower as a reference point to follow the trail that the lights had led the night before. Dan kept an eye on the river too, remembering the phosphorous trail. There were people moving on the streets below them, cars out on the streets, but that dwindled to a crawl as they made their way along the waterfront. 

This had been hardly better than a slum a few years ago and then the property had been bought up cheap for use as factory and office space. Most of them were owned by subsidiaries of Veidt Enterprises as was evident by the V logo everywhere. Most of them had a few cars in the parking lot, but one had the lot full. All the cars had heavy dew on the windshields as Rorschach pointed out. They had been there all night. At least.

“You think the whole building was taken?” Laurie asked, looking him in the face. The markings flew into a ring of splotches, looking a little like a shark bite. 

“Only one way to find out,” Dan said to break the silence. He dug in an equipment storage bin for some scrap armor pieces. “I think we should all reinforce our collars though. Just in case.”

“Keep our heads.” It was more a growl than a joke from Rorschach and Dan handed him a strip to fasten under his scarf. He helped fit another piece around Laurie’s throat. Her new costume was much more reinforced than the old one, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Once it was on, she gave him a smiles and he lined his own neck armor all over again. 

“All set,” he said and they started down from the roof. Rorschach led the way down a utility ladder to a security door that he kicked open easily. They waited for an alarm, but heard nothing. It didn’t mean there wasn’t one, Dan cautioned them, but they made their way through the dark halls anyway. The building was quiet and empty. Offices were open, computers were on. There was a steady beep that got their attention, but it was only a phone knocked off the hook. Laurie reached to hang it up and Rorschach caught her wrist. He shook his head. She shrugged in acquiescence and they went on. 

Dan was looking in closets and cabinets, anywhere someone might hide. Laurie hopped up on desks and was raising the ceiling tiles, looking for ventilation chutes big enough for a human or squid. Rorschach was looking through files. 

“Feels like everybody just went to a meeting doesn’t it?” Dan mused as they made their way to the ground floor. 

“Must be seventy-five cars in the parking lot,” Laurie reminded him. “If they never left where did they go?”

“Larger compound in basement level,” Rorschach said, looking over some schematics he had dug out of the chairman’s office. “With access to river. Probably intended for dumping.”

“That doesn’t sound right,“ Dan moved to squint over his shoulder. “Adrian was always environmentally minded. He would never dump his runoff in the river.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. He owns too many businesses to keep track of them all.” Laurie suggested. 

“Unlikely,” Rorschach said. There was a loud ping that sent them all into attack formation and the elevator nearest them slammed open. It was empty and the lights inside seemed burningly bright. They stared into it, hearts pounding. After a moment, the doors slid shut again.


	15. Chapter 15

Laurie needed a better mask. It may have been enough to hide her identity, but not her expression. Fear was contagious and her wide eyes and trembling lips sent an uncomfortable pang of empathetic dread through him. 

“They can control the elevators?” she asked. “Like the lights?”

“If so,” Dan said, voice measured and slow. “Do we want to go where they’re leading us?”

“I vote no,” she said immediately. 

“Agreed,” said Rorschach. “Feels like a trap.”

“Plan?” Laurie looked from cowl to mask. 

“Firebombs,” Dan said at once. “Burn it down and anything hiding in it.” They both looked at him. Laurie honestly looked startled, but Rorschach just tilted his head. “Controlled explosion,” he tried to reassure them. “Collapse the whole building down on whatever’s down there.”

“You’re sure it’s down there?” she jerked a thumb towards the elevators. “Lot of property damage either way, but a waste of good explosives if you’re wrong.” He hesitated, rubbing a palm on his forehead then letting it slide to his neck.

“Something is,” he said. Fear flickered over her eyes again. 

“Hearing it again?” Rorschach asked before she could. 

“Hearing something,” he said. He hadn’t looked away from the elevator yet, Laurie realized. She caught his arm and pulled him to face her. 

“How about you?” she asked Rorschach. He didn’t answer, flexing his hands inside his gloves. “Ok,” she said, crossing her arms. “Strong and silent in a horror situation just comes off as creepy. Say something.”

“Almost,” he admitted. She made an ‘and?’ gesture. “…Almost hear something. Moving.”

“Could it be any of the employees?” she asked without hope.

“Maybe,” Dan said, just as pessimistically. 

“So we have to check,” she said, wilting despite herself. “Just to be sure. Much as I hate it. And the first person to suggest splitting up will be slapped. Hard.” She glared at Rorschach, who nodded . 

“Maybe there’s a security station,” Dan said, “With cameras showing the lower levels.”

“Behind the employee lounge,” Rorschach said. “Nothing in there working. Smelled burnt. Need a new way down.”

“Stairs?” 

“Close quarters. No escape if trapped.” 

“Through the river access?”

“Squids have the advantage in the water. We’d need Archie and if things went wrong, we’d be trapped again.”

“Daylight is our only advantage,” Dan said suddenly. “How can we get some of it down there? Besides blowing up the building.” Rorschach checked his schematic again. 

“Delivery dock doors in back,” he said. “Bottom level. Open doors, let sun in?”

“How many?”

“Six.”

“Is there a way to open them all at once?” Laurie asked.

“Warehouse loading doors are usually locked from the inside,” Dan said. Rorschach nodded. “But there is more than likely a delivery access door too. If we can get that open, we won’t have to wander around stairs and halls anymore.”

“Straight into the maw,” Rorschach muttered, but it was a plan, so they made their way back through the empty buildings, trying not to think of things below the floor, listening to their footsteps.


	16. Chapter 16

It was a relief to step outside again, if a little weird to be in full costume in daylight. The walked around the building where the parking lot sloped down to the dock doors. Dan cut the security alarm and Rorschach picked the lock to the unassuming door on the back. It opened outward, and when pulled open, long threads of goo stretched from it to the darkness inside. There was a few inches of something coating the floor, like the plumbing had backed up and pumped a layer of jellyfish ooze out over the whole floor. There was a sound like the hum of insects or the murmuring of dozens of very faint voices. 

Dan turned on a light and but it didn‘t help much. The whole warehouse area they could see was coated with the slime. Ropes of it hung from the rafters. The hallway they were facing was completely filled with it. They could see the glow through the jelly where other lights had come on, but it didn’t illuminate much. It was so hideously surreal that they all just stared for a moment. Rorschach shook it off first and went straight for the door locks. 

“Electronic,” he reported, snapping Dan out of his horrified reverie. 

“I’m on it,” Dan said. He hurried by the gel-blocked hallway as if expecting it to reach for him. “See if you can get some more lights on.”

Rorschach and Laurie cast around for any switches that might be buried in the ooze. Laurie got her arm tangled in some of the threads and pulled it free so violently that it toppled whatever the other end had been attached to. It would’ve fallen if the web of ooze hadn’t been strong enough to hold it. Rorschach dug out his flashlight and spotlit a a gaping face, hanging like a cocoon in a spider web. 

They had found the missing heads. They had been arranged carefully, but not with any rhyme or reason that was immediately obvious. Laurie had knocked one from a small pyramid. The backs of the heads were all ruptured outwards and the same hooked threads that had shot out of the tentacle in Dan’s neck were hanging out of them. They connected like electric cables, combining all the heads and leading off in all connections. The murmuring was coming from the heads, their lips barely moving, just a soft drone of their last thoughts whispered over and over. 

This could all be very different, Laurie thought. She and Rorschach could be coming here days from now and finding Dan’s head here among them. The thought made her prickle and the slight inhale she heard from Rorschach made her think he was imagining it too. She brushed his arm with her hand, just enough to be there and gone too quickly for him to flinch. His hand closed tight around her wrist, surprising her. 

She thought he was returning the too-human gesture of comfort, but he had seen something that had left him frozen and clutching her. Fear tightened her throat too much to speak, but she followed his gaze over the cluster of heads and saw one she recognized. A gasp would’ve been too loud for her choked throat, so she ended up making a sort of sob. 

It was Adrian. His eyes flickered here and there, more animated than the others but just barely. With his levels of control, maybe he had been able to ( _keep his head? God, no, she wasn’t going to laugh. She wouldn’t be able to stop and then it would become screams and Rorschach would have to slap her and she wasn‘t going to give him that satisfaction-_ ) keep some part of himself. Against all her own better judgment and wishes, she started to pick her way through the tendrils to get to him. Rorschach was either unwilling to let go or had forgotten he was still holding onto her, so he followed. 

“ _…wrong. Both wrong._ ” Adrian whispered. They had to lean close to hear him over the others. “ _She was wrong, I was wrong. Two wrongs and no way to make it right. Wrong, wrong, wrong…_ ”

“Adrian?” Laurie forced her voice to work. “Can… can you hear me?” Her fingers shook, but she touched his cheek. His unfocused eyes rolled toward her and Rorschach’s grip tightened on her other arm. 

“ _She’s wrong,_ ” Adrian said again. “ _I thought I knew, but I was wrong. She thinks she knows, but she’s wrong, Both wrong._ “

“Who’s she?” Laurie tried again. “Adrian? Who did this to you? Adrian?”

His eyes flickered again, but the litany of ‘wrong’ didn’t stop. Maybe he didn't even know they were there. All around them, the other voices rose and fell in their own little chants.

“Ozymandias,” Rorschach tried next. There was no reaction to that either. 

“Sh- should we try to get these things out of him?” Laurie whispered, gesturing helplessly at the tendrils coming out of the back of his head.

“Decapitated,” Rorschach said. His blots were sharp-edged, like a hedgehog split down the middle. “Can’t be alive unless those things keeping him that way. Might die if we pull the plug.”

“Would you want to be left like this??” she asked, but he was already pulling her away. 

“Might send something to check if connections to minds are lost,” he whispered. “Put him to rest when its safe.”

“Ok.” She was embarrassed to be so grateful to follow his lead on this. The whole point of adventuring with these two was not to be ‘the girl’. The first part of her costume she had altered had been the shoes. Nothing she had any chance of twisting her ankle in, nothing to get caught in anything, no reason at all that they would have to rescue her instead of someone else. Then again, he was the one clutching her hand.

He jerked to a stop with a low sound that she first thought was pain. Then she saw that the hall of gel next to the door locks was clear enough to walk through now. The doors were still locked and Dan was gone.


	17. Chapter 17

“NononononoGodnononono,” Laurie had to take a deep breath to stop the string of panic. “It took him! It took him. He wouldn’t just leave us like this, he wouldn’t! It grabbed him and took him right under our noses!”

“Left the way clear to follow,” Rorschach said, peering down the hall. The hall was still lined with gel but there was enough room to walk now. Laurie laughed weakly. 

“Oh my God. It’s such a trap. It’s a nightmare trap and we have to go anyway.” Rorschach nodded. It hadn’t even occurred to either of them not to go, but Rorschach did hold back. 

“Doors first,” he decided. 

“What? What if they’re taking his head right now? We have to-”

“Open doors. Let the light in.”

“God, what I wouldn’t give for some firebombs now,” she whispered. “But if we aren’t being stealthy, I don’t have to save ammo.” 

She produced her firearm, a specially designed Glock 18. Rorschach almost protested. There might be more squids, the noise might bring them on faster, but the thought of Daniel engulfed in ooze, trying to call for them while tentacles poured down his throat just made him rasp out a “Hurry!”

The gun packed a wallup and after the incident with Adrian in Karnak, she had opted for a fully automatic model. It took three shots to blast the lock off the first door, two for the next three, and the last two she took out in one. Rorschach hurried after her, throwing the doors open. Sunlight poured in and the slime oxidized like cut apples where it fell. That should’ve been a hopeful sign, but they were running down the hall before they could appreciate it. 

This was completely stupid, Laurie knew. She would never make fun of horror movies again. The sensible thing would be to get back to Archie and bomb the hell out of the top of the building and go wading into the lower levels with flame throwers. But that would still be too late. Dan was probably already dead, at the very least infested somehow, and she was already bracing herself for that discovery. She was not going to scream and faint or throw a wall-punching tantrum like she had on Mars. 

_He can’t be dead though!_ It was a thought that was entirely too close to a snivel. She had never had to worry about Jon, so this experience was a new one. What the hell would she do if she had lost Dan? She couldn’t breathe just thinking about it. And Rorschach, what would he do? Dan was the only thing that connected him to her. Without Dan, he would have no reason to have anything to do with her. She would be completely alone if Dan was - _he’s not! He can’t be!_

“Promise you won’t disappear,” she whispered. Rorschach hesitated and she knew why. A soldier couldn‘t swear he wouldn‘t be killed on the way to battle. “After,” she added. He didn’t speak for a moment, but nodded. 

They were leaving footprints in the ooze. There were no other ones, which meant Dan hadn’t walked on his own. They were leaving the daylight behind, fading back into the jellified glow from the coated ceiling lights. They flickered and Rorschach stopped. Laurie stopped with him. The lights steadied again, but he didn’t move on. He gave his head a slight shake. 

“You ok?” she asked, gun still at the ready. He didn’t answer and slowly raised a hand to his head. “Are you hearing it again?” He didn’t speak, and she found herself shifting to be able to fire if she had to. “Rorschach? You’re really going to need to say something.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Shoot me.”

“Don’t shoot you or shoot you because whatever you’re saying ‘don’t’ to isn’t listening?” She had kept her voice steady this time, but the hand on the gun quivered a little. 

“Hear him.”

“Who? Dan?”

“He was wrong,” Rorschach said. “Wrong, wrong. All of us, all you were wrong.”


	18. Chapter 18

She almost did shoot him. Fear tightened every joint in her body and she had to forcibly keep one finger loose on the trigger. Why would he say the same thing Adrian was? What had they both tapped into? And then he thrashed suddenly, fighting something.

“Rorschach??” she shrilled, keeping the gun trained on him. He didn’t respond. She remembered another name Dan sometimes muttered in his sleep and wondered if calling him Walter would help or hurt. Maybe she could just wound him if he turned dangerous. Maybe the pain would snap him out of it. Maybe she could shoot him in the foot without permanently crippling him. He would never forgive her for that. Neither would she, honestly. But he didn’t make a movie toward her. He was fumbling with his mask, pushing it up to cough violently. He hacked and wheezed, trying desperately to work something up.

“Maggots,” he gasped and she jumped on that. 

“He was only like six years younger than me,” she said. “And they just poured out of him, like hot, squirming rice spilling out of a boy-shaped pinata.” Her voice broke again, worry for him instead of past trauma. He retched, but she didn’t let up. “I couldn’t eat anything white for weeks without imagining things wriggling in it. I had to switch to blue toothpaste because I gagged every time I squeezed the white kind out like a big oozy caterpillar.”

He grahh-ed, so loudly that she flinched. He hacked hard again, pointing desperately at his stomach. It was better than shooting him, so she hauled off and kicked him in the gut, not as hard as she was able, but hard enough to drop him to his knees, vomiting helplessly. The handful of graham crackers he’d had for breakfast came up along with something pink she guessed was some of the slushie Dan had gotten at the refueling station. There was also something white and fibrous that moved entirely too much like the maggots had. 

It was small, no bigger than a quail egg, but the fact that it had grown to that size from just a few threads that he had sucked out of Dan’s neck had her clutching him away from it. She had become her mother after all, she thought, remembering how often Sally had yanked her towards or away from things. Rorschach was shaking and allowed her to cling for a few seconds before getting back to his feet. Once he was standing, she stomped the thing into a squelch. 

“Fine now,” he panted, pulling his mask back down. 

“You’re sure?” 

“Chest hurts.” He held his hand to the slash. “But voice is gone.”

“Could you tell what it was?”

“Felt confused,” Rorschach said. He started walking again. “Frustrated. And getting angry about it. Hnrh. Felt like that before. When information is needed and no one is talking. Know they will eventually, but in the meantime…”

“You said he was wrong,” Laurie had to jog to keep up with him now. “Adrian said she was wrong. Who is wrong about what exactly?”

“Thought I heard Daniel, trying to explain, tried to explain back, but whoever she is, she wasn’t listening to us.”

“Is… she human?” Laurie didn’t think it was very likely and the half-shrug Rorschach gave convinced her. If he wasn’t giving a definite answer , then he was as rattled as she was. He slid to a stop and she nearly ran into him. On the floor, leading the way deeper into the building, was a trail of Dan’s armor. First was his goggles, and Rorschach fumbled for them, holding them close to his chest. Next was the cape, torn free. Laurie resisted the urge to snatch it up. Pieces of armor, like a trail of bread crumbs, and she wasn’t going to panic yet. 

“There’s hope then,” she said aloud. “I honestly figured there would be a headless body by now.” Rorschach made a sound like she had kicked him again. He was already grieving over the goggles, she realized, and she took his arm. “Naked is way better than dead, in almost every situation I can think of. Come on.”


	19. Chapter 19

It had happened quickly and silently. Dan had gotten the lock disarmed and then it was like a curtain had fallen over him. His vision had blurred, and something had engulfed him. It filled his nose and his mouth, choking off the cry of alarm before it could vibrate off his vocal cords. He could see Laurie and Rorschach, still unaware of his plight. They were looking at something out of his line of sight. The glob all around him started to withdraw, pulling him down the hall. 

_Turn around!_ He tried to scream at them around the tendril down his throat. _Help me! Look up and help me!_ And maybe they did, but he was pulled away before he could tell. The ooze was working its way under his goggles, seeping into his armor and crawling like a living thing between costume and skin. He fought it as best he could, but it was like boxing in jell-o and it was already inside him. 

His costume was peeled off, seams split and pulled away. He was choking and gagging around the part down his throat. It felt as big as an arm and it was cold enough that he could feel it working its way through his stomach into his intestine. It was the most horrific, invasive thing he had ever felt and it flowed through him in a cold river. He was almost relieved when his muscles gave out and he purged violently. The ooze didn’t relent, just keep exploring and his body did its best to expel it. It felt like hours of vomiting and voiding until he was clean enough for the glob to withdraw and leave him naked and empty and too weak to even whimper on the floor. 

How long had this been going on? Was it still daylight outside? He hoped Laurie and Rorschach had gone back to Archie to use the bombs after all. He hoped they weren’t wandering around in this mess looking for him. He didn’t have any hope for himself at the moment. 

And that was when, perhaps summoned by that hopelessness, she emerged out of the layers of slime, a monstrosity he had only seen in pieces after the massacre in New York. She was smaller than the original, but he felt her awareness bore into his mind like the tentacle had gone into his neck. 

“No,” Dan wheezed, but if he hadn’t known he was saying it, he wouldn’t have understood the sound that came out of him either. He felt some sort of dim recognition from her, and she scrabbled at his mind like a squirrel with an acorn. Something gave a psychic crunch and he heard his own strangled wail from a distance without realizing it was his voice. He could hear her now, or at least comprehend some of it. 

_One that can fly_ , she whispered. _Builds things that fly_. She pawed through his memories of Archie with what felt like rusty fishhooks. She dragged out his estimates of his ship’s limitations from his mind, making him gurgle. Her disappointment clawed deeper than the hooks had. Archie was not what she wanted. She needed more and while she was losing confidence in the human insects ability to deliver, there was no way to be sure until she dug out all the way to the core. 

_I don’t know what you want!_ Dan shrieked at her, feeling her attention start to burrow in again. _What do you WANT??_ Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her to explain, or that he would understand enough to ask, maybe the severed heads hadn’t been particularly useful, but she withdrew for a moment and then flooded him with a very primal need to return. 

Did wild geese feel this way before migration? Did soldiers dying in foreign fields wish this hard to see home one more time? The need to escape and return to where she had come from was a compulsion that sang and burned like contained lighting, to leave this place with its crippling daylight and nagging gravity and all the senseless, poking, prodding ants called humans who had somehow imprisoned her. She hadn’t remembered where she was from, had never experienced it for herself, but she had fed on the minds of the people in her psychic range and they had been sure, as they had been told, that she came from outer space. Somewhere in the black behind the stars was where she was from and that’s where she wanted to go back to. 

_That’s wrong_ , he realized. _You’re wrong. They were wrong. That’s not where you’re from. You can’t go back there._

She went still, utterly still and quiet, and it felt almost like when he accidently said something that offended Rorschach and was being given a chance to explain before his face was punched in. 

_They were wrong_ , he tried to convey. _They were lied to._ He summoned up every loathed memory of the winter of ‘85 for her to see. _We were all used, all of us, used and lied to, and wrong. You are not an alien creature from past the stars. You are a lie that was told so well it gained its own life. It isn’t right, but it’s true._

Her grip on his mind was released so suddenly that it felt like hole had been left and all his memories spilled into it like sand to fill it back up again. His own awareness flickered out like a wet candle and he went back into the dark.


	20. Chapter 20

They almost didn’t see him. The room was hung with barely luminescent tendrils like a glow worm nest. As pale and clammy and _still_ as Dan was, in the weak light his naked body blended in with the slime entirely too well. Laurie ran by him, stopping to look around frantically when there was no other door.

“He has to be here somewhere,” she gasped. Rorschach was already on his knees scraping away the layer of jelly still clinging to Dan’s face. “Oh, Jesus,” she said when she noticed, and ran over to help. “Jesus! Part of his hair's white! What did they DO to him??“

Dan was dishrag limp, eyes rolled back in his head, but when Rorschach tore off gloves to press against his throat, the pulse was there. The relief that went through Rorschach’s frame was so profound that Laurie didn’t even have to ask. She sagged gratefully and when Rorschach clutched Dan to his chest, put her arms around both of them.

“We have to go,” she whispered. “Let’s get him up.” Rorschach nodded. Laurie stood up to holster her gun so she could use both hands to help. A hand fell on her shoulder and she turned to find a bland-looking man in a dark suit. Her first thought was that he was one of the missing employees. Then, a seam appeared down the middle of his face and she gasped, hand dropping back to the gun. 

There were two blurs of movement, one was Rorschach rising from his knees with a roar of rage and the other was the gush of tentacles shooting out of the man’s mouth. Laurie saw the barb coming straight at her as she brought the gun up. It would stab her, but she’d still blast the hell out of it. Then, Rorschach’s fist closed on it right in front of her nose. Laurie started shooting, saw the tie disintegrate, then aimed higher to blast the mass behind the mask to mush. Rorschach ripped the tentacles out and flung them. 

“Hurt?” he growled. She shook her head. “There’ll be more. Keep the gun out. I’ll carry him. 

Dan was cold, slippery deadweight and they had to struggle. Rorschach hooked Dan’s arms over his shoulders and heaved him over his back. Laurie kept watch, helping when she could, and keeping the gun up for anything else that might jump out at them. 

“Should’ve had that in Karnak,” he grunted. 

“That’s why I got it,” she said. “Better late than never. He might‘ve dodged the first round, but I would’ve gotten him eventually, splattered that amazing mind all over his stupid outfit. If I had it then, this wouldn’t have happened. ”

“Too late to stop the squid.”

“I meant _this_. Isn’t this just like him? To drop that thing on the city and then let his own research companies have the pieces to pretend to figure out what it was? “

“Can still reap the benefits of his experiments,” Rorschach nodded. “Shrewd.”

“Son of a bitch. He doesn’t get to pretend he was doing it for humanity if he was always intending to profit from it too.”

“Already dead,” he reminded her, then stopped. She spun too and saw two more of the suited squids ahead of them. They weren’t moving and didn’t, even when Laurie immediately shot one to smithereens. 

“Who,” the second one said. “Knows?”

Laurie hesitated, glancing quickly at Rorschach. He couldn’t defend himself and hold Dan, so she was prepared to fire as soon as the thing moved. It seemed to be aware of that too, and stood motionless. 

“Someone,” it said. “Knows.”

“Knows what?” Laurie asked, gun trained on its eye. The Glock was hard to aim, but she was sure she could hit the head at this range. 

“You know. You said. One knows. One did all this. To all of us.”

“Adrian Veidt,” Rorschach said. “You have his head out there.” The strain of holding Dan up this long, made his voice just a growl. 

“Drained them. Found nothing.” It nodded towards Dan. “That one knows. Told.”

“You can’t have him,” Laurie said at once. 

“Need more.” 

“No.” This time it came from Rorschach. Laurie saw his body tense to charge and she opened fire. Rorschach lunged forward and more figures manifested in the ooze around them, like cave worms traveling their own tendrils. 

“Get him out!” she screamed at Rorschach, turning to fire at the new attackers as the wave of tentacles rose around her. “Just go!”


	21. Chapter 21

Rorschach broke into a run. He heard the gunshots firing behind him, some pinging into the walls, some splattering into the squids. Pain zigzagged out of his knee. Not now! He had forgotten that injury in the stress of Dan’s neck and the thing he had vomited up. He forced it to run faster. Pain couldn’t be allowed to stop him. Dan weighed him down, and the way seemed twice as far now, but he found that if he didn’t stop to fight, he could just trample his way through the ooze tendrils in his way. 

Dan’s weight actually helped his momentum as he bowled down a suited squid that stepped into his path. He kicked it hard in the nose, felt the surface give and shards dig inwards, and another stab of pain in his knee. He could see the wholesome glow of daylight down the hall, literal light at the end of the tunnel. They were so close! He had to get Dan to safety and then go back for Laurie. 

His foot slipped in the slime and his knee twisted so badly, for a moment he thought a tentacle had stabbed through it. He fell and Dan fell on top of him. They both slid a few feet, and Rorschach rolled, feeling his kneecap shift in entirely the wrong direction. He was probably screaming. There was noise in his ears, and the squids were usually silent. He could see them coming up the hallway, no longer running now that he was clearly not able to escape. He didn’t hear gunshots anymore. 

He rolled again, setting his good foot against Dan’s back. There was a white patch in Dan's hair now, he realized, the whole left side of his head. With his back braced against the wall, Rorschach kicked as hard as he could manage, sending Dan’s splayed, naked body sliding through the mess on the floor. It should’ve been ridiculous-looking, but there was nothing but relief as Dan disappeared into the sunlit patch. Rorschach forced himself up, shutting his mind down. Adrenaline fought with the pain and he lunged back towards the squids. 

If they hadn’t been there for him to collide with, he would’ve fallen flat on his face but as it was, he tore straight into the first one. It wrapped around him, arm, legs, and tentacles. He drove his thumb into its eye socket and it chirred. The others swarmed over him too, blocking the light out. They weren’t trying to kill him this time, he realized, just contain him. He lashed out with all the power left in him, felt their bones break, felt splashes of whatever fluids pulsed through them, but there were tentacles around his neck and his air was being cut off. 

When his arms were restrained, he kicked until his legs were hopelessly tangled too. Spots flashed under his mask and he was dimly aware of being moved, very smoothly and very quickly. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, and the last thing he was aware of at all was a hushed voice in the back of his mind. 

_Oh_ , it said, interested, surprised. _You know what I am really._

He wanted to scream, wanted to call to Laurie, but the presence behind the voice engulfed him and drowned him. It took him down deeper than the building, deeper than the world, into the blackness below.


	22. Chapter 22

The next thing he was aware of was someone screaming. It wasn’t Laurie, which frightened him a little. If she was dead, Dan would never forgive him. If Dan survived. If his sanity survived. The screamer shrieked again, screaming a string of ‘no’ and broken apologies and the occasional plea to a mother who had no hope of hearing it. 

Rorschach took slow stock of his own senses. His heartbeat felt too hard, like it was rocking him back and forth. He didn’t think he could move on his own yet. He couldn‘t feel much. A new rush of dread hit at the thought that he might be paralyzed. Or worse, just a head in a pile. The screaming went high-pitched, making him wince. His throat was sore too, maybe from being throttled, or maybe from whatever had been stuffed down it while he was unconscious. He swallowed hard, and the screaming stopped. Had he been the one screaming?

Now that it was quiet, he could hear a new sound, right in his ear. Someone was humming or crooning, a half-formed lullaby that kept interrupting itself. He tried to speak and couldn’t. His overworked vocal cords couldn’t downshift to anything more than a rasp, so he concentrated on opening his eyes. 

The numbness was frightening. Even his mind had to struggle through a Novocained fog. He tried to focus on any part of his own body and all he was really sure of was the rocking movement. 

“It’s all right,” the crooner whispered. “They were wrong. It’s just a joke.”

Laurie? He tried to say it, but couldn’t. He was able to drag one eye open and when it adjusted he could see her throat and her chin and part of her chest. She was holding him and rocking him gently. It was her heartbeat he could feel jack hammering under his ear. Did that mean he didn’t have one of his own anymore? Was he really just a head that she had found in their prison and clung to like a mad child’s toy?

“Don’t be scared,” she whispered again. “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right. He isn’t really your daddy. It was just a bad joke.”

What? That didn’t make any sense. From his angle he could tell that her face was drawn. She was shaking and hollow-cheeked. Her lips were dry and cracked, like she’d been left in a lifeboat for weeks. How long had they been down here? Had Daniel made it out? Had he died wherever Rorschach had flung him, or had he been dragged back into the depths with them? Why couldn’t he remember?

Rorschach remembered fighting, being dragged down, but then there was something that he didn’t want to go near. A memory that had wrapped itself in blankness that sent him reeling away from it every time he came close to recalling. He felt for it anyway. The truth had to be known. No matter how awful it was. 

Laurie’s voice had fallen to a hum. He didn’t know the tune, and it might not have been just one. He remembered the boy who had drawn pictures back in the home and he remembered… something. Something had been very interested in that. 

She hadn’t known. It stabbed through him. Whatever that thing was really, she hadn’t known what she was. And now she thought she did. She had pulled it out of his mind, like a tooth from his jaw, leaving exposed nerves and flesh behind. He had thought she was a lurking nightmare boogieman that preyed on minds and sanity, and now that’s what she thought she was. Horror forced another cry out of him. 

He had doomed them all. She might’ve been content just to be a monster in a basement, but now thanks to his own fearful memories, she thought all of humanity was her prey. Had Laurie been her first meal? Had she come through the walls and left a babbling shell of a hero? Is that what had happened to Daniel? Is that what had happened to him? Was the whole world huddled and gibbering now? All because of him? All because of the darkness of his own mind? 

Daniel would’ve told her something good about herself, something at least natural, about aquatic food chains and sonar or whatever. He wouldn’t have created a monster. He wouldn’t have brought on the end of humanity with his own paranoia. At least he knew why he had been screaming now. He could hear the sound building again, tearing its way out of him. Laurie cooed and her thumb ran over his mouth to soothe him. 

“Shhhh,” she said. “It’ll all be over soon. The end is coming. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

There was a boom somewhere overhead that sent a vibration through the walls and floors. There was moment of silence then an explosion. Laurie leaned back to look up, clearing Rorschach’s line of sight as well. The ceiling overhead was suddenly seamed with fire and a second blast send pieces raining down on them. Laurie hugged him tighter. 

“See?” she whispered, a weak but gratified smile. “The world is ending. Everything will be fine.”


	23. Chapter 23

Built on a budget, the building’s top floors were destroyed quickly. The cheap materials burned away under the firebombs and Dan landed in the parking lot. He had modified his underwater suit into something seamless that wouldn’t let any ooze in. He had been found in the sunlit docking floor by a passing homeless man at some point. As soon as he had woken up in the hospital, a witchhunt obsession with destroying the place was set in motion. 

There had been no sign of Rorschach or Laurie, Archie had still hovered over the roof, and voices had prickled in his mind. Logic said they were both dead and grief may have been part of the driving force behind his rage but that prickle in his head, like cold weather pains in a scar where his mind had been impaled, it felt like his partners screaming.

He didn’t feel like a hero now. He felt more like Ahab, or Van Helsing. The only thing to do was burn down the building and destroy everything inside. He refused to allow himself the hope that his partners were alive. He couldn’t afford to run through looking for them. He had to be careful, meticulous, an exterminator, and make sure no trace of the things were left. He had rigged a flame thrower from the air tanks in the suit, and once the upper levels were laid open to daylight, began his way in. 

With the horned suit, and the glow of his thermal vision goggles, he looked as monstrous as the creatures he wanted to burn, but couldn’t find any. He had to content himself with scorching the structures of ooze into nothing. Finally, he heard the trace of an eerie song that wasn’t in his head. Hope flared again when he recognized the voice, and he squashed it down. It could just be her head, droning to itself. That could be all he was picking up. And why was he picking up anything unless it was a trap, a siren song to bring him back into the reach of tentacles?

He moved on carefully. Something warm flickered in his thermal vision, a weird mass of limbs on the wet floor. He turned the setting to night vision and nearly fell to his knees with relief when he saw Laurie’s shape, curled maternally around Rorschach’s. He forgot all about it being a possible trap and ran over to them, already babbling. 

“I thought you were dead! I was sure you were dead! But I could feel something…“ he gestured at his head. “So, I hoped, had to try… Jesus, look at you. I don't even know how long it's been, and you, you haven’t eaten at all have you? “

“It’s all right,” Laurie said. “If you eat, you can’t leave, and it’ll be winter forever.”

“That’s Persephone,” he said, dismayed by how blank and unmoving she was. 

“I know,” she said. “You knew, and so she knew, and now I know.”

“What did she do to you?” Dan whispered, horrified. Her benign expression wobbled. 

“Can’t,” she said. “Hurts. Don’t want to see. Don’t-”

“It’s OK,” he touched her shoulder. “You don’t have to remember. How’s Rorschach?”

“Kkh,“ Rorschach grated. One syllable and it took all his strength. Laurie had him in a headlock and the rest of him was completely limp. 

“Don’t worry. I’m going to get you guys out. Laurie? Honey?” Dan tried to slip his hand under her arm to pull Rorschach out of her grip, but she only squeezed him tighter. Her arm muscles were locked tight. He could feel the cramps move up and down under his fingers. Had she kept that death grip the whole time? “Can you let go of him so I can pick him up?”

“No!” She looked up at him through her disheveled bangs. He had never seen her hair so unkempt before, but it least it hadn’t gone shock white. “He’ll die if I let go!”

It would’ve been easy to chalk it up her trauma and delusion, but he could feel the psychic prickle of her certainty. She was really convinced that Rorschach would die if she relaxed her grip on him for even a moment. Dan looked lower and felt his gut clench. 

There were sucker wounds on Rorschach’s neck, deep gaping ones. Laurie’s fingers were buried inside the deepest one, pinching the vein shut. He would’ve bled out days ago, if she hadn’t. No wonder he couldn’t move, he was bled nearly dry, as well as starved, and dehydrated, on top of whatever that thing had done to him. 

“You’re right,” he said, knowing she needed to hear it. “Ok.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s see how quickly I can do a lateral suture.”


	24. Chapter 24

Dan had to keep squashing down his emotions. He had found them both, which was more than he had dared expect. They were both alive and salvageable, which was nothing short of a miracle. He could hear his own breathing hiss through the suit and wished it had a cowl he could push off so he could kiss them both. It was just as well, he thought, kicking that impulse to the back of his mind. Rorschach might not be alive much longer if he couldn’t patch the torn vein in his neck. 

The hardest part was getting Laurie’s fingers off. She had held on so long, so tightly, that her joints and muscles had locked. He had to clamp off both ends of the vein and manhandle her fingers out of the way. She tried to help, but he could sense her pain at any movement in her clenched fingers. How long had she been awake? It would explain her dazedness. He remembered something about the longest anyone could stay awake was eleven days, but there had been hallucinations and psychosis. He had no idea how long he had been out before he woke up, so he wasn’t sure how long she and Rorschach had been down here. 

It occurred to him that he was failing again. He wasn’t going to search this building to the core now. He was going to get these two safe to move and get them both out. If there were any squids left in the lower levels, they would have a chance to escape now.

“They’re already gone,” Laurie said. 

“What?” Dan looked up, startled. “I… didn’t say that out loud, Laurie.”

“I know.” She grimaced, trying to straighten out her arms. “But your thoughts don’t hurt. I don’t mind hearing them.” 

“You can hear me.”

“Yes.”

“Ok,” Dan considered freaking out at that, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He tried to think comforting, admiring thoughts, just in case. There was a spurt over his fingers and he had the vein sealed off. “There. You’re a few pints low, buddy, but I think you’ll live.” Rorschach’s eyes rolled towards his voice, then closed again. Dan felt a flicker of guilt from him, as if he was actually a little sorry he wouldn’t be dying.

“Don’t even think about that,” Dan said. He realized he would have to leave the flame thrower and set it down. He scooped Rorschach up over his shoulder, shocked at how light and limp he seemed. He held out a hand to Laurie and she took it. He pulled her up to put an arm around his neck and helped her stagger along with him. 

“You both need a hospital,” he said. “Just to get your fluids replaced. Catch up on your sleep.”

Rorschach's flicker of guilt melted into something almost fearful. There would be squids at the hospital too. They were everywhere now, because of him, looking for weaknesses, any chinks in mental armor. They would leave the whole world headless and mindless and wandering off rooftops trying to hear voices from the stars.

“It’ll be all right,” Dan said. Optimism felt alien now, like he had no right to even suggest it would be all right. It might never be all right again. Rorschach’s face could split into a tentacled mass at any second. Laurie could suddenly dig her fingers through his mask and her voice could drop to an unearthly monotone, demanding to be taken home. He thought again of his flame thrower. Could he bear to use it on one of them? Probably not. 

“Adrian’s gone,” Laurie murmured as they came back out through the dock.

“Adrian?” Dan asked. “I tried to call that bastard for days. Are you saying he was here??”

“You didn’t see,” she realized, nodding weakly. “Adrian’s head was here. Must’ve taken them when they left.”

“You saw Adrian’s head?” The suit kept his voice from going too high, which Dan was a little grateful for. Rorschach grunted softly against his shoulder blade, grabbing Laurie’s attention.

“I need a knife,” she said, reaching to touch his leg where Dan held it. 

“Ok,” Dan said, walking again. 

“Thought they would take his head,” she whispered. “Thought I could cut off my hand and attach our veins to keep him really alive. Not just talking alive. But the gun was empty and I didn‘t have anything with an edge.”

“That’s… really sweet. But I don’t think it would work that way, honey. You’d need more than a knife. Like the same blood type.”

“You’d’ve done it if you had to,“ she said, and he had to agree.

Back on Archie, he set Laurie in the passenger seat. She held out her hands for Rorschach, like a child reaching for a doll. Dan hesitated, having meant to stretch Rorschach out in the back, but gave in and set him down in her arms.

“We’ll have to get him out of costume,” he said. “No one will recognize him. But you-”

“Famous enough that no one will even notice him, or remember you,” she said. Rorschach’s head rested under her chin and she leaned her cheek against his hair. The sight sent a blaze of warmth through Dan. All his trampled down emotions came rushing to the surface again, and he fumbled with his suit until he could pull it off to his shoulders. He sank to his knees by the chair and kissed her. She leaned into it with a yearning sound that made him tingle despite her state. He wasn’t the only one who had despaired of never seeing each other again. 

He pulled back to press his lips against Rorschach’s too. Rorschach’s eyes opened and Dan felt a warm exhale into his mouth while Laurie nuzzled his ear. It was a moment too sweet to be real and he savored it until the ‘ready’ light pinged on the console.


	25. Chapter 25

It took five days of constant iv drips and sedatives before Laurie could make her way around the hospital by herself. They had sent in a counselor to talk to her, and he had been pretty sure she had some form of post-traumatic stress. Given her history with Manhattan, all sorts of specialists had descended like vultures. Sally had flown in from the west coast to fuss over her and had seemed unnerved by how grateful for the attention Laurie was. 

“What the hell happened to you, baby?” she asked. Laurie had gone wide-eyed and silent at that. Sally had stared back for a moment, then immediately changed the subject, flouncing around, criticizing the drab curtains and ordering a whole hothouse full of flowers to pack the room with. She bullied the staff unmercifully and sent them to pick up take out when she declared the hospital food inedible. Dan kept tabs on her from Rorschach’s room, a floor down and a hallway to the left. 

He had felt her distress at the radiation tests they insisted on doing and without even thinking had sent his mind out to touch hers. She had screamed, mistaking his presence for another one. The technician trying to draw blood had been slapped by Sally and pandemonium had broken out. Dan had apologized so awkwardly that she had recognized him and settled down. As she got stronger, their communications had become more coherent. 

If he concentrated, Dan could sense everyone around him, like tiny pin pricks in black paper, letting a faint star of light through. Laurie was a steady glow, bright as her costume. He could pick up traces of her emotions and if he tried, send her messages. Rorschach was a different story. His mind felt like it had never been brought out of the basement, like he was still curled in the bottom, waiting to die. Reaching out to his mind triggered a dizziness like freefall, but Dan still tried. All through the transfusions and the iv drips, he had stayed by the bedside. He had tried to argue with the nurse who came to give the occasional sponge bath, but she had told him that he would have to leave if he couldn’t stand to watch. Dan had halfway hoped the indignity would force Rorschach back to consciousness, but there wasn’t so much of a flicker of a response. 

As soon as Laurie had her strength back, she limped down the hall to find them. The constant attention had done her good. She was still far from 100% and her eyes might never lose that haunted shadow, but she smiled and crawled into his lap without any hesitation. They cuddled, just enjoying each other for a moment, then they both ended up staring at Rorschach.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Dan asked. 

“I heard him,” she whispered. “He was screaming that he was sorry, something about a mother, I don’t know if it was his,” she added when Dan looked startled. “He kept apologizing, but I don’t remember listening. I wasn’t doing too well myself.”

“They took him after you,” Dan said, processing it. “And when they were done with him, they left. What did they get from Rorschach that sent them packing? What did he know that they took from him?” She wasn’t quite prepared to follow his logic, but tilted her head to wait for him to explain. It was unlike her, and a little eerie. 

“She, the thing, wanted to find out how Archie worked, she wanted to go back to where she thought she came from. And since she eats minds, and since everyone knows the squid came from space, she thought that was true. She was upset, I think, to see my memories of how she was really made.”

“Is that why she took Adrian’s head, but left the others?” Laurie asked.

“I don’t know,” he sighed and touched noses with her. “Do you remember what she asked you?”

Laurie’s face clouded over, but she tried. 

“Something about my parents,” she said. “I thought- It felt like- There was something about… w-what Jon told me about the Comedian. And Jon.. She was… “ The pause grew long while she struggled for a word. 

“Interested?” Dan offered and she nodded. They were quiet for another stretch. 

“Too bad we couldn’t send her to the Comedian,” Dan said. “He would know where that island was, where the squid was made. That’s the closest she’ll come to home on this planet.”

“Why couldn’t she get that from Adrian?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe he was just a head when she got him.”

“Nrrh.” Rorschach rumbled softly. Not wanting to send him shrinking back into the darkness of his own head, Dan didn’t try to touch his mind. They were both watching him closely though, like cats that have heard a mouse in the wall. 

“Can you hear us?” Dan asked. “Come on back, buddy.” There was a steady increase in the beeps from the heart monitor. They saw his hand, bruised and bandaged across the knuckles, jerk and clench tight. 

“Rrn,” he said again. 

“Rorschach?”

“Run,” Rorschach grated out. His face clenched like his hands and he seemed to have to force his eyes open. “Coming up the stairs.”


	26. Chapter 26

Dan lashed out with his mind, spreading his awareness out in a psychic shockwave over their entire floor. He felt the flicker of busy thoughts from the medical staff, the various fearful or resigned minds of the patients, and there, approaching up the far stairwell, just as Rorschach had said, something that’s mind writhed in ooze. It became aware of him as soon as he was aware of it and he felt it hesitate. It thought he was one of them, and Dan felt rage rumble in his chest like an animal’s growl. He scooped Laurie from his lap to Rorschach’s and stood up. 

“I’ll take care of it,” he said as calmly as he was able. He hurried out, breaking into a jog down the hall. Once in the stairwell, he went into a full charge, rounding the corner. There, coming up, was a serene-looking woman with short hair and a doctor’s white coat. Behind her eyes, something gelatinous stirred and he threw himself at her in a flying tackle. Her expression stayed placid, even as her body took the brunt of their landing, but a seam appeared down between her eyes. 

He punched her in the mouth as hard as he could. On a human, he would’ve felt teeth and skull. In this creature, he felt the exoskeleton crack and splinter, and his fist drove through it into a soft, wet mass. He dug his fingers in, ripping out a handful of tentacles and flinging them. It spasmed, but he didn’t let up, raining punches on it until the back bowl of the head shape was full of jelly. He crushed that under his foot just to be sure. 

He cast out his mind again, felt Laurie and Rorschach waiting on him, battle ready, but not too worried. They could feel him too, and knew he was all right. What to do with the body though? There was a large trashcan at the base of the stairs, so he tossed it in there and raked some of the trash over it. Smears of ooze still streaked the stairs, becoming discolored in the light of day. He ducked into a bathroom to wash the rest off his hands and hurried back to his partners. 

“Killed it,” Rorschach said. His voice was a creak. Dan looked incredulous. 

“Of course,” he said. Approval lit in Rorschach’s haggard face. Anyone else would’ve beamed at him. With Rorschach, his eyes crinkled a touch and his frown softened. 

“You both felt it,” Laurie said. “I don’t think I did.”

“Used to having mind tampered with,” Rorschach said. She looked puzzled and he added. “Jon. Tried to make you see as he did.”

“How did you know that?” Her voice went low and dangerous. He wasn’t impressed. 

“Still had your memories under its fingernails when it dug them into my head,” he told her. “Saw a few things before tore my mind out.”

Her eyes went wide. Dan felt a jolt of horror from her and Rorschach must have too because he shuddered. He wrapped his arms around himself but the IV hoses pulled and he winced. His stitches had been medicated and bandaged when he first came in and Dan had had to answer some strongly worded questions about why his friend was in such a state. 

“You said you got some of what I knew from her from her too,” Dan reminded her. 

“That’s so gross,” she said. “Like...like a mind STD.”

“Thanks.” Dan wasn’t really upset at the comparison, and she wrinkled her nose at him to let him know that she knew it. 

“So I’m numb to it?” she said. “How am I supposed to help hunt them if I can’t find them?”

“Planning on hunting them?” Rorschach asked. He was just glad to change the subject. She crossed her arms huffily. 

“Like you aren’t?”

“Have to,” Rorschach said. “My fault.”

“How do you figure that?” Dan asked. 

“It didn’t know about being a monster. I told it that. That’s why it left. Took what I knew about the squids the other children were afraid of and became that instead. My fault. She learned she was made when she took you,” he said, nodding at Dan. Then he turned to Laurie. “Learned about mistakes from you. Learned about monsters from me. Knows what it is now. Free to walk through walls and eat minds. Because of me. My fault.”

“Rorschach, no,” Laurie reached for him, but he flinched away from her. 

“Don’t deserve it,” he mumbled. He looked at them over his shoulder, shame and despair plain on his face. “Don’t deserve what you feel for me. Either of you.”


	27. Chapter 27

Dan and Laurie looked at each other. Dan raised an eyebrow. A faint blush appeared on her face, but she nodded. 

“Don’t talk like I’m not here,” Rorschach said. It was entirely too forlorn to be his usual growl, reminding them both that he had just barely come out of a week long coma.

“Didn’t say a word,” Dan said. He had walked to the edge of the bed. Laurie was still curled at the foot of it. They were both looking at Rorschach and he felt a little hunted. 

“Thinking it,” he said, managing a decent glare. Dan smiled gently. 

“I’ve always thought it,” he said, watching the glare clench into a nauseous scowl. “The only difference is that you can hear what I think now.”

“I don’t want to!” Rorschach snapped. His righteous indignation was dissolving into distress. They could feel it happening long the edges of their own minds, the pain in his arms from all the needles, the helplessness of being so unarmed and fragile in a place he hated so much, and a swirl of emotions that weren’t complete enough for him to support them with his usual conviction. The near panic, the half-betrayal, the partial horror that paled in comparison to the actual horror he had lurking in his recent memories, there was something he was trying very hard to make into disgust at what he was absorbing from them, but another part of him was also harboring something that he wasn’t quite going to allow to be hope. He could feel them becoming aware of all that too, and not being to hide all his tumult under the usual gruff armor was even more of a blow. 

“I can’t!” he insisted, crumbling. He had no idea if they would understand that. He couldn’t be what he was with all that brought to the surface, to all their surfaces. He would have to become something else, which nothing else had ever been able to make him do. Laurie sighed heavily and then started crawling up the bed toward him. He wouldn’t look at her. 

“Can you hold me?” she asked and he froze. They could feel the dim memories of the pit come back to him. He remembered how she had held him, trying to comfort him, pinching his jugular vein shut, and singing half-remembered lullabies as her own mind caved in from the weight of what had happened to it. While he grappled with that, she eased up into his lap, turning to gingerly lean her back against his bandaged chest. He wheezed a little, having no idea what to do with his arms that wouldn’t offend her or Dan. 

He didn’t want to touch her, didn’t want Dan to see him touching her, not out of any disgust of his own, but the disgust he was sure they would feel. Laurie put both her hands over his, hooking her fingertips between his fingers, making him think of legs interlocking, which made him flinch. Laurie ignored both the mental images and the jerk and set one of his hand primly on her ribcage, and the other on her thigh. She was in some pajamas her mother had brought her so he didn‘t have to touch bare skin. Yet. He quivered, but didn’t snatch them away, so she let go of him and held out her arms to Dan. 

Dan was too big to squeeze into either side of the narrow bed, so he crawled over, straddling them to keep his weight off. He settled down over them both as gently as possible, trying to keep his weight on his elbows. Laurie wrapped her arms around him with a happy hum. He was tall enough that his head could rest on her shoulder, which put him eye to eye with Rorschach, who had blushed as red as his hair. His throat bobbed with nervous swallows and probably gulped back condemnations. In the background, his heart monitor was jittering. 

He tried to pull his hand out from between them, but Dan caught it before he could decide on a new place to put it. It was pulled up to be held against Dan’s chest. Rorschach was so terrified that he would be kissed again and the fact that he had no idea how to respond to it that Dan had mercy and just nuzzled his jaw above the bandage. The need to say or do something, but having no idea what, had Rorschach on razor’s edge. Their obvious comfort didn’t calm him any. 

“How can you even-?” he finally sputtered when Laurie reached up to drag her knuckles down his cheek and on to Dan’s.

“Told you,” Dan murmured into his ear. “Always have.”

“And I told you,” Laurie added. “That he loved you. That to be able to stand it, I would have to find a way to love you, too. I’ve been sharing him with you this whole time. Kind of a relief to have you here in person finally.”

“Crazy,” he whispered, shaking his head. Laurie was finding herself distracted by the white patch in Dan’s hair. It was just big enough to slide her fingers into and comb out to the brown. That was the entry wound from where the thing had dug into his brain. It crossed her mind that he wouldn’t like her handling it, if the motion might remind him of what had been done, but he rolled over to kiss her without any qualms. The sound she made was throatier this time and they felt Rorschach trying to pull even farther into his headboard. 

“Someone could come in!” There was a note of plea in his voice. 

“Not unless you pull the monitor off and make the machine flatline,” Laurie teased. “No sudden movements.”

“Could be seen like this!”

“Good,” Dan’s voice was calm and steady. He locked eyes with Rorschach again. “Gives us an alibi if they find that thing’s body.” Again, there was a coldness there that was unexpected from Dan, but it wasn’t an alien coldness. It was still Dan all the way through, one that had rallied back from madness and despair and found himself stronger than ever. Realizing that sent a warm tingle through Rorschach, only to be drowned in shame when both Dan and Laurie felt it and grinned at him.


	28. Chapter 28

He could feel everything. His arms were tight around Laurie’s ribs and against Dan’s chest. He could feel both their heartbeats and his own, hammering hard and painful in his throat and in his head wound. Laurie’s back pressed in close and her hair slid over him. He could smell Dan, feel lips along his jaw, felt a hand slide up Laurie’s side, up his own arm to cup his head. He could feel Laurie’s kiss on Dan’s chest like it was his own and gasped. Dan saw his lips part and kissed them. 

Rorschach’s grip tightened on Laurie and she arched, bringing all three of them into closer contact. Everything was pulsing and warm and every movement any of them made was felt by the other two. When Dan’s fingers slipped under the waist of Laurie’s pajamas, she sighed, but Rorschach gasped again, flinching back from the kiss. Laurie squirmed, shifting so that while Dan’s fingertips fondled her, his knuckles stroked over Rorschach.

It was entirely too much. Rorschach couldn’t stand it, wouldn’t be able to control himself if it went much farther. He was already beside himself with shame and arousal and his body’s response to both was more than he could deal with. He pulled back, even as his hips pushed up, helpless to control either reaction. 

Sensing it, Dan stopped. Laurie moaned, but didn’t argue. They both squirmed around to look at Rorschach. He was shaken, trying hard not to look at their flushed faces.

_It’s ok_ , they told him, words flicking over his mind as gently as their kisses. _You’re safe. We’ll stop. It’s ok._

“I just,” he tried to tell them. “Just-”

“Me too,” Laurie said, kissing his shoulder. He met her eye, barely. 

“You can’t really-” he tried to say. “Not right to-”

“You should know better,” she said, holding his gaze. He could sense the truth in her words, but he still could hardly believe it. 

“You _can_ know better,” Dan said. “Here.” He pulled Rorschach’s hand up to touch the fingers to his forehead. “Look and see. Take what you want. No doubts. No fears. See and know me. Know everything.”

Rorschach realized what he was offering and felt another wave of amazed disbelief that they were doing this for him and guilt that it was because he wasn’t able to give back as generously as they were. He saw Laurie hesitate, saw her bite her lip, but then her resolve remained and she nodded. 

“Me too,” she said. “See all our intentions. Feel what we feel.”

Which was worse, that they were so shamelessly offering him everything, or that the gesture was wasted on someone with so little to give back that he couldn’t even accept? While he struggled, Dan touched their foreheads together and he felt all the psychic doors open. 

_Please_. It wasn’t spoken aloud. It was hard to tell which one had actually said it. He remembered being dragged mind-first into the creature’s maw. This wasn’t like that. _Come with us. Be ours_. He was still weakening, slipping into the psychic whirlpool, but even if it was against his better judgment, it wasn’t really against his will. Like a warm pool instead of a black pit, he let himself lean over and slip in, felt it close over his head and into a swirl of molten intimacies. 

He could feel every thought lap at him like warm tongues, feel every limb slipping around and under, could taste his own skin in their mouths. He burned and throbbed and felt the answering pulses of heat from both of them. His panting and pounding heartbeat had his stitches tight and fiery. He thought he was feeling Dan’s sensation of kissing his stitches until he realized that the sutures really were under his mouth. It was the wound he had tried to suck the tentacle out of, nearly healed now. 

Did the doorknob click? Rorschach half-raised his head to see, but if there had been someone there, they were gone now, and fingernails dragged down Dan’s back distracted him from it. Under all the heat and the dazed need, he could feel Dan on alert and the sensation of being safe and watched over was as unfamiliar as being desired. Detecting that thought, Dan smiled at him. It should’ve been frightening to have his partner so vigilant, but another kiss sucked a whimper out of him, and all was a fiery haze until they were collapsed in a tangle on the tiny bed.


	29. Chapter 29

Eventually there was a knock at the door, and they heard Sally’s voice, too amused to be scandalized. 

“Can I come in _now_?” There was no doubt that she had seen them. 

“No!” hissed Rorschach, doing his best to shrink behind Dan. Laurie rolled her eyes.

“I’ll come out!” she called. She slid out from between them and straightened her pajamas and hair. 

“Come back as quick as you can,” Dan said. It wasn’t romantic, more a tactical command. “Find out how soon you can be released.” Her smile faltered, but she nodded and hurried out. She only opened it enough to slink out, not letting her mother see into the room. Once the door clicked shut again, Dan didn’t give Rorschach any time for stress or recrimination. They locked eyes, and Rorschach’s discomfort was forgotten at the intensity behind the stare. 

“I know why they left her alive,” Dan said. “They used me up, tore your throat out, left us for dead. Not Laurie. She wasn’t hurt, except for the digging in her head. They wanted her alive and suffering.”

Rorschach’s eyes narrowed in confusion. His mouth formed a word, but Dan was answering before he could speak it.

“I felt it when we were-” He paused as Rorschach flushed again. “Occupied. I didn’t want us to, you know, broadcast out and bring any of them to us. When she let go and lost herself in it, I caught a flash of the holes they dug through her thoughts and all the tunnels lead to her memories of Jon.”

“What would psychic squids want with-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dan was matter-of-fact again. “They brought up every memory that would cause her pain and left her to drown in it. If she hadn’t had you to focus on I don’t think she would’ve ever resurfaced. “

Rorschach hesitated. He remembered a little of what she had been babbling about, something about fathers and bad jokes, and broken ribs and the world ending that hadn’t made sense. Did it?

“Why?” he asked to refocus his own thoughts. 

“I wanted to be sure we weren’t broadcasting,” Dan explained. “They wanted to be sure she was. Who else would Jon return to Earth for? If he felt her afraid and hurting, wouldn’t he come back to help? And they would have him. She was bait. She still is bait. They’ll try again. They don’t need us anymore. Except maybe as bait for Laurie. She’ll come to us, Jon will come to her. They believe.”

“Go,” Rorschach said , pushing at him. “She shouldn’t be alone.” Dan tapped his temple.

“She’s not.”

“Lured us into… vulnerability to see into our heads?” If it had been said with any conviction at all, it wouldn’t been an accusation. Rorschach had seen into Dan’s head too, though, seen more than he was really comfortable knowing, and more than enough to know exactly what Dan’s motives had been. Dan knew it too, and grinned at him. 

“It used to hurt my feelings when you did that,” he said, touching noses with him. “At least you know how ridiculous it is now too.” Rorschach made a rough noise that must’ve felt like it sounded because he winced and Dan cupped the bandages on his throat. 

“Gotta get you two better,” he muttered. “Back in action.”

“You really think the squids are a match for Manhattan?”

“Free will has never been his strongpoint.” Dan nodded to the door. “It’s Laurie.”

“We have to tell her.”

“She knows,” Dan sighed, as the doorknob turned. “It just hasn’t pieced together yet.”


	30. Chapter 30

“This is completely unfair,” Laurie said as soon as she saw them curled conspiratorially together. “We get psychically connected and you two still leave me out.”

“You know better,” Dan said, just as he had to Rorschach a moment before. “But we do have some things to talk about. What did your mom say?”

“My last test results will be in the day after tomorrow,” she sighed, crawling up to settle in with them again. “If those are clean and I don’t have an episode that brings that stupid shrink back, I’ll be free to go then.”

“Good,” Dan turned to Rorschach. “They’ll be checking on you soon. I’m going to rush out all excited that you’ve just woken up before they get here. I’m asking you now to be as agreeable as you can so they’ll release you too. “

“Don’t need them to release me.” Some fire lit under Rorschach’s expression. “Have a window.”

“Nothing unusual about us,” Dan reminded him “Nothing memorable. We checked in, got treated, we checked out.”

Rorschach nodded reluctantly. Laurie’s hand ghosted lightly over his throat bandages and he turned to look at her. Her fingers curled, muscle memory of the days on end feeling his life flicker against her fingers. She was looking at his throat instead of up and at him, so he glanced a little uncertainly at Dan. Dan smiled a little and leaned in to kiss her fingers and the bandaged spot. She leaned a little farther to kiss the healing wound in Dan’s neck. Rorschach shivered, but didn’t flinch this time. 

“Did your mother see?” he asked, almost in a whisper. 

“Of course,” Laurie almost laughed, but smothered it in a smile when he blushed miserably. “Just our legs, though. She counted more than four, so she’s actually a little proud of me.” He made a disbelieving sound and she did laugh then. “She’s been trying to get me to notice the single doctors. Maybe now she’ll listen when I say they aren’t my type.”

 

It turned out to be another four days before Rorschach was released. Despite Dan’s mental encouragement, he was not a good patient, snarling and grumbling at the nurses who tried to tend him. The next offer of a sponge bath went exactly as Dan had been afraid it would, and when she smugly informed him that it was nothing she hadn’t done several times already, Rorschach’s nurse had to flee the room for her own safety. That got him another day of ‘observation’. 

Laurie was allowed out earlier. She stayed the last night with her mother at the hotel, and came to pick them up after seeing Sally to the airport. Rorschach blinked angrily into the afternoon sunshine. The world still existed, which he had doubted a few times.

They went to Dan’s brownstone. It was eerie to hear the faint voice of the TV, still on the News channel where Laurie had left it. The kitchen was surreal too, cabinets and the basement door hanging open from their hasty retreat. Had it been two weeks ago? More? Laurie opened the fridge and winced at the smell. She started dumping old takeout containers into the trash can. Rorschach picked up a knocked over chair. He looked over his shoulder to ask Dan something and then stopped. 

Dan was staring past him at the kitchen table. He turned quickly and Laurie has synched with them enough to look too. There on the table was the flame thrower Dan had had to leave behind in the pit. Neither of them remembered it, but Dan’s memory of dropping it in the slime so he could carry them echoed through all three of their minds. 

“They know where we sleep,” he said.


	31. Chapter 31

“What do we do then?” Laurie asked as they paced and fretted. The flame thrower sat there. “Do we leave?” 

Dan hadn’t spoken, but was thinking hard enough that they could hear it. His first impulse had been to go to Hollis’. He had inherited it after all, but the squids might remember that from his head. All of their minds had been rummaged through. None of their old hiding places were safe, so they might as well stay put. 

The decision made Rorschach pace and grumble. His unease prickled at both their minds so Dan recruited him to help set up new security in the Nest. They would put motion sensors all down the tunnel, he offered, in and out of Archie, and up the steps. Rorschach agreed it was a good idea, but it only kept him busy until he decided that Dan didn’t really need any help. 

“Go find us some new locks then,” Dan said. “For the doors and windows. Good ones. Ones that would keep even you out.” He said it with enough humor that Rorschach wouldn’t feel dismissed, but got a calculated squint anyway.

“Don’t want you down here alone,” he said after a moment of hovering. Dan wasn’t even going to argue with him.

“Send Laurie down then.” When Rorschach still hesitated, he added. “She’s alone upstairs after all.”

For a moment, Dan was afraid the teasing had backfired when Rorschach squatted down beside him. He leaned his head into Dan’s shoulder, eyelashes brushing his arms as he squeezed his eyes closed. The undercurrent of worry and pain made Dan ashamed of treating his concerns so lightly. 

“It’s ok, man,” he said. “We can all go together if you would rather.”

“Haven’t told you,” Rorschach murmured. “What it was like. Finding you.”

“What?” 

“We looked up and you were gone,” Rorschach said. A chill worked its way up Dan‘s back. He remembered being dragged away through a nightmare haze but after the thing had torn out his mind, there was nothing until he had woken up in the hospital. “Saw the trail through the slime.”

“You should’ve known better than to go after me,” Dan said, but his fingers trembled on the wires. Rorschach made a sound that was distant kin to very dry laugh.

“Should’ve known better than to expect that,” he said. “Carried you out on a dislocated knee. Laurie let herself be taken to give us time.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, then Dan hung his head. He swore softly, overwhelmed, and Rorschach looked up. 

“Your goggles are probably still in my coat pocket,” he said. “Found them. Assumed the worst. Grieved for you as I have never grieved for anyone.”

Admitting that made him hide his face against Dan’s arm again and Dan dropped his tools entirely to pull him close. They nestled together and Rorschach’s voice whispered into his head this time. 

_Laurie made me promise not to leave her. If… if you were… gone._

“How?” Dan asked. 

_Asked me._

“If I had known it was that easy,” Dan said, kissing the back of his neck. “I’d have asked you years ago.”

_No need._

“I know.”

Dan nuzzled against his ear and Rorschach turned into it, digging his nose under Dan’s jaw. Dan could feel more than that, a swirl of remembered despair flowing out like too-warm air from under the mental door. There was the agony of worry down the endless, jellied halls, the horror of finding him covered in slime like another part of the furniture, and the hysterical, miserable hope that really knew better until the pulse had throbbed under Rorschach’s hands.

It was awkward, almost painfully so, to feel Rorschach’s memories of digging him out, of how precious his cold, slippery body had been in that moment, and how it hadn’t mattered to Rorschach if he lived or died as long as he got Dan out. Dan’s weight had pulled his chest and arm stitches tight, ripping a few free, not that that mattered compared to the pain in his knee and the fear that that would be the injury that cost them all their lives. 

And there was something else, the echo of his own voice, heard through the thing, and through her tiny offspring that Rorschach had sucked out of his neck. There was a fear under that memory, that the only reason their minds had opened up like this was because there were still pieces of the thing inside them and it was the pieces talking to each other.

“I don’t think so,” Dan said aloud again. “But we can look. Scan each other. I didn’t before because you were pulling back from every touch to your mind. It was like shining a flashlight into a hole and you trying so hard not to be seen.” He hesitated and then lifted Rorschach’s head to touch noses and foreheads with him again. “Did you not know it was me?”

“Didn’t want it to see you through me,” Rorschach said. His jaw clenched stubbornly. “Bad enough I taught it to be a monster without giving it a way back to you. If I stayed numb and blind, so would it.”

“You can’t still think this was your fault,” Dan sighed. He slid both hands to cup Rorschach’s face and tried to kiss him, but Rorschach ducked back down. 

“Doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” he said, eyes going hard. “That much is done. But. Can’t happen again.”

“I didn’t tell you what it was like either,” Dan said. “Going back alone. I was fairly sure you were both dead and all I could think abut was burning the place to the ground. “ His voice dropped to a whisper. “I could almost hear something in the back of my head and I was afraid it was a trap to lure me back, but I couldn’t not go, and when I heard Laurie’s actual voice I was afraid she was just a head. Just a head crooning down there with all the others.“

Rorschach shuddered. “Thought I was,“ he muttered under his breath. Dan wouldn’t have understood it at all if he hadn’t picked up a flash of Rorschach’s memory of waking up in her arms, her disjointed lullaby and her insane assurances about his father that still didn’t make sense. Dan’s body tensed as Rorschach remembered his own paralysis and he swore again. 

“It felt like such a miracle to find you alive after all,” he said. “Seeing you hurt like you were, I was just gibbering because I didn’t think I could stand it if you still died after all that. And poor Laurie with her fingers in your neck. She didn’t save you just for me, you know.”

“….I know…” Rorschach hunched his shoulders, like a child embarrassed to be so pleased.

“She loves you too.”

Rorschach only made a little sound at that. This time, Dan was able to kiss him, but the moment ended as one of the motion sensors furthest down the corridor went off. They sat frozen in a moment of blinding, tingling fear. They slowly got to their feet. There wasn’t anything visible down the corridor so without looking away, they reached for the lights. All the lights came on at once, flooding the tunnel. Nothing was in sight. They turned off the rest of the sensors and crept down the walkway to the alarm.

They both had their awareness wide open for any stray sentience. So far nothing. They could feel Laurie in the house above, half listening to the news and bleaching out the drains. 

Maybe it was a rat. Or an especially large roach. Then again, maybe it was some shapeless horror feeling around blindly for any trace of them. They cast around the alarm for anything that could’ve set it off. Dan wondered again about the river, what was in it, what could be in it, was already half-planning some sort of sealed door for the tunnel, when something dripped on his arm. He froze and held it up. There was a splat of something on his sleeve, clear and cold as water from the ceiling, but jellified. Rorschach’s hand swung out to catch the next drop before it hit and it sat quivering in his palm. They both looked up. 

There was a damp spot directly above them, one of many. The others had always been there. This one was dripping right over the motion sensor. It had a gelatinous patch like a vaseline-flavored mold in the middle of it. 

“Could be something perfectly natural,” Dan said it casually. “Some sort of bryozoan maybe.” Rorschach didn’t speak. After another stretch of silence, Dan whispered: “Go get the flame thrower.”

“Not leaving you,” Rorschach said. He wiped his hand on the brick wall. Dan was tempted to argue. He had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t be able to find the spot again if they let it out of their sight. He knew how crazy that probably was, but was also largely immune to insanity anymore. 

Then, they both felt Laurie’s horrified shock splash over their minds. It wasn’t strong, but it brought them upright in a heartbeat. Almost before they could process it, they heard the basement door fly open and her fear-shrill voice echo down the tunnel. 

“You guys! It’s Veidt! He’s on TV!”


	32. Chapter 32

The three of them piled onto Dan's couch and huddled together to watch the press conference. It was Veidt on the screen, looking pale and severe in a black suit. He was speaking seriously on the disappearance of the employees at his building. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about him. His voice and mannerisms were all the Veidt they knew. It just couldn't be. 

“His head was severed!” Laurie hissed, terrified and furious. She sat between them, one hand clutching bruises on Dan’s leg and the other tight around Rorschach’s arm. “He had a tentacle out the back of his head! Whatever that it is, it isn’t really him. It is not…”

“Squidmen wore suits,” Rorschach whispered back, as shaken as she was. He had seen the head too. “Never seen Veidt in black before. Even at the funeral.”

Dan shushed them both. It took him a moment to remember what funeral he had ever seen Veidt at, and while Rorschach hadn't been there in plain sight, it didn't surprise him at all that his partner had been there somewhere out of sight. He accepted it to make room for other thoughts. Whatever it was behind the familiar face on tv was assuring a questioner that all benefits would be given to the families of the missing employees whether or not they were ever found. 

Terrorists were mentioned and all three of them went still. If Dan had been seen before he bombed the building, they could be hunted all over again. It did seem as if this Veidt looked directly into the camera and at them before he very solemnly took full responsibility for the incident. His researchers had been trying to create a new kind of fuel, he said, and he suspected that there had been an accident with one of the prototype engines.

“We won’t know for certain until our recovery team finishes their investigation,” he said, the picture of grieved determination, and the camera cut to an anchor doing her best not to be smitten. She babbled something and they cut to a commercial. 

“Are we going to investigate this?” Dan asked as a woman in a short skirt pranced by the screen in a spray of flowers extolling how fresh she felt. Rorschach was only too glad to focus on Dan instead. 

“How can we not?” he asked. 

“We can’t save Adrian,” Dan said. “What are the benefits to bringing ourselves back to that thing’s attention?”

“Has access to his mind and his resources. Twice the threat. Sooner eliminated the better.”

“But they already had his brain when they took Dan,” Laurie said. “Remember? They kept saying they needed more. That‘s why they wanted him.”

Dan didn’t remember that, but he caught the flashes from both their memories. He caught Rorschach’s eye and they both looked at Laurie. 

“It isn’t me they want anymore,” he said before she could begin to be afraid of their silence. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped, but then she was shaking her head.

“That doesn’t make any sense! Why would they want me? There’s nothing special about me!”

"Except for who you are loved by,” Dan said, softening it with a smile. “Personal bias aside, of course." He had already said that it wasn’t him, so she blinked at him in confusion before risking an almost bashful glance at Rorschach, who blushed.

“Jon,” he grated, but not before she realized how forcibly he had to keep from hurting her feelings by blurting out a ‘No, not me!’ and mostly because it wasn’t all that true. Dan ducked his head to hide another smile at how that flustered both of them. Laurie recovered first.

“Jon?” she echoed. “Well, why not? Let him come. Let him shrink them all down to the size of atoms and they can wiggle and slime all they want on a microscope slide somewhere.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that simple,” Dan said. “But more immediately, do we still want to stay here? Can we make this place safe enough to sleep in?”

They all processed that for a moment. It was easy to imagine something reaching through a drain and slipping in to engulf them and drag them away while they were asleep. Rorschach pictured it the most vividly and winced. 

“Rather sleep in ship again,” he muttered. 

“We could,” Laurie agreed. “Drag a mattress into the back. Sleep out of reach. Just until we’re sure.”

“I'm not leaving the place unguarded,” Dan said, getting up. “I’ll set up security. You two pack up Archie.”


	33. Chapter 33

They had time to pack more carefully this go round. Dan was busy setting up cameras and surveillance devices and wiring them to view from Archie while they took the time to take everything they should’ve grabbed the last time. Rorschach set some precautionary booby traps for his own peace of mind and after a dousing in fire to clear the tunnel, they took off for the open air.

There was a mattress in the back, and Laurie was setting up house, cracking jokes about what her feminine role. It took a few hours to find a place that wouldn’t conflict with wind patterns or other aircraft. Dan cruised to a safe hover-height and turned around to see Laurie already in her sleepwear, a loose tank top and panties. She had made up the mattress and was turning down the blankets. Her thoughts were as quick and steady as her pulse, relief at all of them being safe spiked with anticipatory nerves. Dan felt Rorschach’s mind go jittery as soon as he saw the three pillows waiting for them. He had known they would all be sleeping together, but faced with a made bed and Laurie’s bare limbs, his disbelief and desire had collided and he was ready to make some excuse to stay up and keep watch. 

_Don’t even think about it._ Dan told him, sliding a hand up his neck and easing him forward. Rorschach still stood awkwardly at the edge of the mattress, so Dan started stripping down and Laurie walked on her knees over to help with buttons. The thought that she might come over to start on his pants as well had Rorschach fumbling to undress before she could. Dan had no qualms with being nude, but Rorschach left his bottom layer on and scuttled under the blankets. 

“Cheater,” Laurie said and reached under to pull his undershirt up over his head. Dan chuckled and shut their lights off. The darkness didn’t make it less embarrassing. 

“Still have yours!” he squeaked, trying to dodge her hands. She grinned.

“Oh, it’ll come off. Don’t you worry about that.” She pulled the shirt up over his head and leaned in to kiss him through it. He nhrred and then gasped as Dan’s hands wrapped around his bare stomach from behind. Dan settled into the blankets, pulling Rorschach’s back flush against his chest. His hands slid up over Rorschach’s ribs and he nuzzled up the scarred neck to bite his earlobe. When his back arched, it brought him into contact with Laurie, who leaned in to swallow his gasp into a kiss. 

True to her word, she pulled her top off and the press of her breasts against him made both of the men groan. While Rorschach struggled with which one of them to cling to, Laurie leaned to kiss Dan over his shoulder. Trapped between them, Rorschach quivered and gasped with each tongue stroke. Laurie remembered the panic she had felt when there was suddenly more than one Jon, how creepy it had felt to imagine all her natural responses methodically tweaked to keep her busy and out of the way while he was working. This time, these extra hands weren’t unnerving. They were too desperate and awestruck and helpless. They needed her too badly. One tangled itself in her hair. Another dug short nails into her hip. 

_How are we going to do this?_ None of them were sure which one of them had thought that, but the answer was a blur of images and sensations from all three of them. Dan’s imagination yawned hungrily at theirs, eager for any and every part of them. Rorschach writhed from the barrage, barely able to believe he was any part of this and still a bundle of nerves, but unable to stop the welling desire that answered. _Yes._ Despite himself, he wanted that too. And Laurie found that any misgiving she might’ve had over memories of Jon incinerated by the wave of heat she felt off them. _Yes_. She wanted that. She wanted them. 

There was still the question of how and who. Laurie wasn’t sure he’d be able to answer if she asked Rorschach which of them he wanted to be inside of, which he wanted inside of him. She could still feel the _God, yes, PLEASE yes_ radiating from Dan’s mind and honestly, she wanted to see what they had both been thinking about for so long. Dan picked up the thought as soon as it occurred to her and groaned. Rorschach just sobbed.

“Say yes,” Dan begged him between kisses. “Please say yes.” Rorschach shivered, unable to look at either one of them, but nodded. Laurie wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down over her, cushioning his body with hers. She kissed him again, running fingers over the barely healed scars she herself had helped stitch up. They both felt Dan kiss down his back and Rorschach twisted in a misery of pleasure. His hands were uncertain, running over her hair, shyly brushing over her breasts without lingering. It wasn’t until Dan’s fingers found their way in that Rorschach’s grip tightened on her and he buried his face in her neck. 

Another finger made him bite down and Laurie moaned. Dan kissed her, interlocking the fingers of his free hand with hers. He kissed the back of Rorschach’s shoulder and sank into him. Rorschach choked and gasped. They had him caught between them. His arms were tight around Laurie, fingernails digging in to her scalp and shoulder blade. 

He clung to her like she was the only solid thing left in the world. His eyes were squeezed shut and his mouth hung open. Lost, hungry sounds poured out of him with every thrust, and each one rocked him against Laurie. Over his shoulder, she could see Dan’s face, also helpless in the throes. He was broadcasting, racking them both with the mind-blowing sensation of tightness and penetration. Rorschach had lost all control of his own thoughts and Laurie felt those too. She bit her lip, hammered back and forth between taking and being taken. 

She could feel every pump of Dan’s hips and the answering grind of Rorschach’s against her. His abs strained and bunched against hers. He was rock hard and she was soaking wet and the friction made her spread her knees out for more. Another thrust, another nudge and if she just raised her hips a little, arched up just so, he could be inside her and they would all be like this. Need sizzled through her and the way Dan howled meant he had caught it to. 

Rorschach’s eyes flew open. She tried to reach him the way she knew Dan could to ask _Can I-? Would you-?_ Whether he picked it up from her or Dan, his response was the same. His arms slid down to her waist, letting her arch back and the next thrust sank him into her. She tried to hook her legs around him and they all got tangled. Their rhythm staggered off track for a minute, but when their minds synched, their bodies did too


	34. Chapter 34

It was an amazing thing, he thought, sometime before morning. The world carried on as it had, even though everything was changed forever. There were thought-eating squid people loose in the city below. Their former teammate, already a mass murderer, was now the father of true monsters. The very humanity Adrian thought he was saving might not survive it at all. And yet, the moon was setting again as if that didn’t matter. The sun would rise soon. There was already a weak light on the horizon. _People_ went on. Traffic continued to be a beast. He could hear the horns and rumbles from a distance. It seemed wrong for anything to be familiar after what had just happened.

The world wasn’t the only thing changed forever. He had changed. He was part of something he hadn’t thought would be possible. He could feel it in his bones and in the electric parts of his head. He tingled and throbbed with it. Dan’s body was warm and solid against his back. He had imagined that before. During patrols they had sometimes had to squeeze together in small spaces or held each other up when injured and maybe that was what had originally given him the idea. He remembered leaning into the owlship seat and thinking it might feel like an armored chest. He remembered waking up in his apartment with his back pressed hard to the wall and his own arms around himself. 

There were other arms around him now. Dan had one curled over his ribs, careful not to press the new scar across his chest. The other one was underneath them both, pressed against Rorschach’s other arm until their fingers could intertwine. Dan held him like he belonged there and it ached deeper than the scar. He could feel warm, calm breathing against the back of his ear, occasionally rising into a soft snore. Dan wasn’t laying awake thinking of how miraculous this was. He had just accepted it and been happy, like always. 

There was another arm there as well. Laurie had reached past his neck to touch Dan’s face and her arm lay heavily across his shoulder. Her head rested against his collarbone. He could feel damp warmth there too. Dan had warned him that she drooled in her sleep. It wasn’t disgusting. It should be tears, he told himself. Tears of disgust and recrimination would make more sense. Her other arm was curled in between their bodies. One of her legs was thrown over his. She held him like she hadn’t spent most of her life despising him. How could that be possible? He was the disgusting one, as hard as he had tried not to be. 

As bewildering as it was, though, it was also as certain as the coming dawn. He couldn’t doubt it. It wasn’t just bodies they had shared. He had been in both their minds as well. Dan really did believe that Rorschach belonged with him, with _them_. Laurie really did consider him hers as much as Dan was. He was torn between squirming away, to put some space in between them, to give himself room to think, and being terrified that as soon as he moved the bubble would pop and he would be alone again. 

“nnnno,” Dan breathed, more an exhale than a word. Rorschach tensed. He wasn’t sure if that had been just a sound or if even asleep their minds were overlapping. Laurie’s mouth moved against his skin, but neither of them woke up and he slowly relaxed again. Everything had changed and nothing would ever be the same again. He had felt that before, but it hadn’t been like this. He remembered the night after the dogs and the fire. The next day started and went on the same as it always had. Dan had greeted him as if there wasn’t ice and smoke coating the insides of Rorschach’s heart and lungs. Rorschach had barely been able to force words out and had retreated as soon as he could make his feet work. Dan hadn’t known, hadn’t understood. Dan’s world hadn’t been dismembered and burned and fed to animals. Only Rorschach’s. 

The wrongness of the world still going on as if a little girl hadn’t died, as if he hadn’t failed, hadn’t become something much harder and darker had twisted him then. It had wrung him tight as a rag and he had let it. This felt more like being shaken out, all his hard lines being loosened and draped over something gentler. He should hate it. He remembered what he had been like before this and how that version of himself would’ve hissed and growled. He wasn’t exactly ashamed of that self, not like he had been ashamed of the soft, idealistic self that had died in the dressmaker’s shop. He understood that self, which might have been why he understood that his partners had had other selves too. He thought he had known those other selves, but compared to the understanding he had now, it was nothing. 

He thought he had known Dan before, but now he was stunned at how much he had missed. There was so much under the surface, some of it weak and damning, yes, but that was spread thin over the iron at the core. Dan was so much stronger than any of them had guessed, inside and out. And Laurie was amazing. Her beauty hadn’t meant much to him, but now he knew it hadn’t meant much to her either. She was a whole person, not a pretty face in a revealing outfit. He had known that, deep down, but it had been easier to pretend otherwise so he wouldn’t have to see past it. 

He told himself that if he had known then what he knew now, he never would’ve spoken so harshly to her. If he had known, if he had felt this way then, he would’ve sided with her against the Comedian. He would’ve kept a closer eye on Jon. What had been blinding him to think that a teenage girl could be responsible for being wooed by a god? He had been young himself, but he could’ve been- and there his thoughts stuttered out because what could he have been? More gentle? More protective? More kind? Wouldn’t he have seemed even creepier to her if he had tried? 

But, if he had, maybe he could’ve steered her in with him and Nite Owl early. They could’ve had this years ago. Maybe Laurie would’ve found Blair faster. Maybe everything could’ve been different. Maybe-

“Quit it…” Laurie moaned into his chest. She wiped her mouth on him only to let her cheek rest back in the puddle. Her eyes stayed closed and he could tell by her thoughts that she was only barely awake and sinking back under fast. “Thinking _loud_.”

“Sorry,” he whispered. She slurred something and was asleep again. He tried to think of something nice for her and wasn’t coming up with much. The truth was that this was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time, so he concentrated on that. He was safe and warm. People he trusted were with him. He was welcome and wanted. There couldn’t be anything better than that. He tightened his fingers around Dan’s and carefully let his other hand touch Laurie’s hair. He let that fill his head up. He never quite made it back to sleep, so he ended up watching the sun rise up over the world again. Daylight didn’t change anything that wasn’t already completely new.


End file.
